Open Writing

...Inevitably, being distracted, rather nervous and not having rehearsed my role, I turned two pages at once, then flapped the pages back and forward while Paul improvised masterfully for several extremely long seconds until I gave him the correct page. There and then, I vowed that I would never again turn pages at a public concert for anyone...

Turning those pages for a keyboard player requires great skill, as Isabel Bradley discovered.

For more of Isabel's very special pages of prose please click on http://www.openwriting.com/archives/here_comes_treble/

Turning The Pages

“Would you turn the pages for me at my concert on Saturday night, please?” my friend Paul asked. He was going to give a harpsichord recital at a home in Parktown. I agreed without a second thought. How difficult could it be? I’d grown up sitting at my brother’s side while he played piano and later church organ, occasionally turning pages for him. It was always fascinating to watch a keyboard player use all ten fingers in ten different directions to create magical music.

The evening of my page-turning debut arrived, and I sat self-consciously next to Paul as he played Bach and Handel on the old instrument for the music-loving friends. On a harpsichord, the keys’ colours are inverted from those on the piano: where the piano’s keys are white, those of the harpsichord are black, and the raised keys white. This was a distraction I hadn’t expected. Inevitably, being distracted, rather nervous and not having rehearsed my role, I turned two pages at once, then flapped the pages back and forward while Paul improvised masterfully for several extremely long seconds until I gave him the correct page. There and then, I vowed that I would never again turn pages at a public concert for anyone.

Most pianists, when performing solos, do so without the aid of the music, they take the time and make the enormous effort to learn thousands of notes by heart, probably because of the dangers of page-turners making mistakes and because in the more virtuoso pieces, turning for themselves is almost impossible without altering the rhythm.

However, when accompanying singers or instrumentalists, pianists usually work from the score, because memorising the many works they’re required to play is, simply, impractical. Working accompanists are always, I have discovered, grateful when someone offers to turn pages for them.

Leon has become an expert page-turner over the years we’ve been together. He takes enormous delight in participating in rehearsals and being a member of the concert performance, without being in the spot-light. Our friend Alice was my regular accompanist for several years immediately after our marriage. She ‘trained’ Leon: although he reads music and can usually follow what is happening on the piano score, whenever she wanted him to turn a page, she would nod or prod him with a sharp elbow if he didn’t respond instantly. Several times, at our regular house-concerts, I put Leon’s name on the programme as the ‘piano-turner’, until someone pointed out to me that he would need huge muscles to perform that particular task…

Over the last few years, as I’ve been performing in theatres and concert halls, Leon has continued to assist my accompanists with his careful and expert page-turning. He’s only once turned a page too early when the pianist was nodding to the music and Leon mistook this for a signal to turn. He’s never turned more than one page at once. His calm presence on stage behind me is always soothing to my own unacknowledged nerves.

At a recent clarinet recital, which we attended as audience members, Leon and I relaxed, enjoying the music. It was, however, the page-turner who had us spell-bound. She was the pianist’s daughter, a little blonde girl about eight years old. Dressed in a white dress with large, cerise flowers all over it, her feet in silver sandals, she tip-toed on stage behind the musicians, hopped up onto a stool to the left of her mother and demurely spread her skirts. Each time her mother’s eyes moved from the bottom of the left hand page to the top of the right, the child hopped quietly off her stool, finger in mouth, and carefully gauged the best moment to lean across and grab the top of the page to be turned without shaking it too much. Then she balanced on her toes, her whole body precariously stretched across the keyboard, occasionally smothering a giggle when her mother’s left hand meandered past her outstretched body to reach the deeper notes on the piano. While thus balanced, she gazed, rapt, at her mother’s concentrating face until Mum nodded and the page could be turned. She dealt extremely coolly with the crisis when a second page followed the one she’d just turned, holding onto the recalcitrant page and carefully but firmly turning it back. Then she hopped back onto her chair, flounced her skirt and remained composed and utterly professional throughout the performance.

After the encore, when the musicians finally left the stage, the little page-turner returned to retrieve the music and received a warm round of applause from the audience.

Surely page-turners should always receive a round of applause. Without them, the accompanist would be lost, and without the accompanist, the music would just not be the same.

To all page-turners, a hearty Thank You for your nerves of steel.

Until next time, ‘here comes Treble!’

By Isabel Bradley