The Piano Shop on the Left Bank

Carhart, Thad. The Piano Shop on the Left Bank: Discovering a Forgotten Passion in a Paris Atelier. New York: Random House. 2001. Print.

First Sentences:

Along a narrow street in the Paris neighborhood where I live sits a little store front with a simple sign stenciled on the window: "Desforges Pianos: outillage, fournitures." 

Description:

After passing a small shop numerous times that sells piano parts on a back street of Paris, Thad Carhart decides to poke his head inside. It is an impulse based on his curiosity about this tiny shop as much as an effort to begin his new project: purchase a used piano and begin playing again.

Inside the shop, he finds himself in a small room displaying hammers, felts, and other piano miscellany. A man emerges from a curtained-off back room, greets Carhart politely, and regretfully informs him that they have no pianos that Carhart  can purchase. The author leaves, puzzled. How can such a tiny shop exist by selling only a small selection of piano parts?

In the ensuing days, Carhart returns to the shop frequently, curious about the business and what is in the back room. Finally he catches a glimpse behind the curtain and sees a warehouse full of pianos in various stages of disrepair. This room has been carefully secreted away off the small shop. The reason? While the atelier (workshop) does restore and sell pianos, they only work with customers recommended by former customers. 

When Carhart finds a neighbor who is a previous customer, he gains her recommendation and finally admittance into the secret warehouse of wonderful pianos from the past and present, carefully bought and sold, repaired, tuned, and polished to former brilliance.

Carhart lovingly describes experiences that follow with the people and pianos of this world in his beautiful memoir, The Piano Shop on the Left Bank: Discovering a Forgotten Passion in a Paris Atelier. Under the guidance of Luc, the director of the atelier, Carhart slowly learns the varied histories, qualities, and quirks of hundreds of pianos found throughout this warehouse. Each piano has a story, just as it has a unique casing and tone. Luc is only interested in "pianos that live" and are played rather than historic museum pieces. He unfailingly discusses his 

respect for all these complex, ungainly, and gloriously impractical instruments, as well as a fascination with what came forth when the ones in good condition were played. 

Carhart  learns the differences between Steinways ("quality craftsmanship and renowned singing tone") and Bechsteins ("clear, bright attack in the upper registers"), Bosendorfers ("the aristocrat of pianos"), Erard and Pleyels ("once great French makers"), and Stingl (Carhart's final choice, a  "diminutive" Austrian baby grand).

Carhart joyfully falls deeper and deeper into this world of the pianos in Paris, from working with a no-nonsense music teacher, finding (and keeping sober) a brilliant tuner, and watching a man single-handedly heft Carhart's newly-purchased 600-lb piano up a flight of stairs to his French apartment. He now hears his neighbors whose playing drifts through his open courtyard windows, and, of course, begins to learn challenging piano compositions.

A vast quantity of popular music [in the early nineteenth century] was written for the piano and most of it was played for entertainment in the home. The piano came to be regarded as one of the indispensable accomplishments that made women of the new middle class charming, attractive, and -- not least -- marriageable. 

Carhart offers beautifully descriptions of clients of the atelier who wander in and sit down at restored pianos for possible purchase, playing delightful pieces in the vastness of the warehouse:

In the repeats, especially, [one client] managed to contrast tone, volume, and color so that identical passages seemed wholly new. The turns were unexpected yet not abrupt, like watching a large and beautiful leaf fall slowly to the ground from a great height: the destination was never in doubt, but the sudden changes made a dance of the descent. He became part of that endlessly subtle, witty, and insistent conversation that is music.

Carhart, in contrast, also mentions Oscar Wilde who once commented: 

I assure you that the typewriting machine, when played with expression, is not more annoying than the piano when played by a sister or near relation.

Carhart's splendid journey of pianos and Paris recaptures his childhood memories of the piano, "a kind of flying carpet by which I could travel to an entirely different place.... a new and agreeable and utterly private world of [my] own." 

We are fortunate, indeed, that he shares the details of his piano travels with us, his readers, in this slight, deeply passionate and sensitive book.

Happy reading. 

Fred

www.firstsentencereader.blogspot.com

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If this book interests you, be sure to check out:

Knize, Perri. Grand Obsession: A Piano Odyessy

The author recounts her quest to purchase the perfect piano and install it in her remote farm in Montana. Delightful account of her trying out and evaluating every piano possible in every store in every city she visits. But after finally, finally finding the perfect piano that suits her best, she find it is only the beginning of her piano story.