Heuston Station, Dublin

Pianos in Public

This is the piano in Heuston Station, Dublin. It is one of three station pianos that I know about in Dublin (the first was in Pearse Station, and I believe there is one in Connolly Station now also).

I love the idea of pianos like that. The SNCF has a load of them in the train stations in Paris – I’ve played two of them. Most of the time that I pass through Heuston now, which is not very often as I live in Luxembourg, someone is playing the piano. The day I played (see below), a couple of teenage girls knocked out a lot of Yann Tiersen after I went off to get coffee.

The pianos in railway stations seem to survive remarkably well. The piano at the Gare de l’Est in Paris is a Yamaha which, by the standards of Yamahas, is a really nice piano to play. We often hear comments like “That’s why we can’t have nice things” when something has been vandalised but a million people must walk through some of the big stations in Paris and yet….

 
Pianos in Public

Trip to Ireland, Bensusan, arranged for piano by me

In Ireland, people come up and talk to you. They even came to me on the train in Mallow, 2 hours to the south to say that they had enjoyed it. I wasn’t doing anything particularly difficult – the piano is a piano d’études, and not very new. The keys are a little harder to play than I am used to. But if it’s free, I play it any time I pass, although I don’t always have time to record it. And I play things that are second nature.

Pianos in Public

Eamon an Chnoic, also known as Ned of the Hill

Cé hé sin amuigh, atá báite fuar, fliuch.

 

Rachmaninoff’s second piano concerto

Mostly, if you ask me what my favourite piece of piano music is, I will most likely answer Rach 2. It’s a wonderful piece of music and I love it. No matter how bad things are the second movement will give solace to my soul. The opening chords are extraordinary, and my hands are unable to play all of them. The arrival of the orchestra changes the colour of the world. There is no other piece of music quite like this, not even any of Rachmaninoff’s other works although the Rhapsody comes close.

This is my piano site. It has had a hard birth but it is here now. I intend to use it as an honest broker in my new world of piano.