The Blüthner Grand Piano (1884) Part II

The Blüthner Grand Piano (1884) Part II

Hagler and Inge Rice came to the United States and settled in New Orleans, Louisiana. I don’t know the exact dates, but it was sometime in the late 1940’s or early 1950’s. In the early 1950’s a daughter was born to this couple. She was born, appropriately, in the month of December, within a week after Ludwig van Beethoven’s birthday which is December 16. Very early on it was recognized that Heide had precocious musical gifts, and her father began to give her piano lessons. The Blüthner piano that had been purchased in Berlin was her first piano. Later, a second piano, a Steinway grand was purchased.

Not too many years later, when Hagler had moved his family to Tuscaloosa, Alabama, they lived next door to my future wife on Reed Street, a street adjacent to the University of Alabama. When my wife and I married in 1970, we decided to live in the apartment that she was already renting. The Rice family was already acquainted with my wife as neighbors would have been in those days. I was welcomed into the “family” after our marriage and the wonderful relationship continued. Hagler, as a previous entry explained, was the best man at our wedding for all the reasons stated in that previous post. At the time of our marriage, Hagler’s wife and daughter were living in Philadelphia as Heide pursued musical training at the Curtis Institute of Music. Their daughter was too young to live by herself in Philadelphia since Curtis Institute is not a residential college. The students have to rent their own apartments as they attend the Institute. Thus, Hagler who was 72 years old at the time lived alone in his inherited home on Reed Street. My wife and I had ample opportunity to visit Hagler as we spent time in the evenings with him in his home enjoying a shared musical interest as well as the company of an extraordinary man who was almost three times our age.

During one of those evenings, Hagler shared a story regarding the Blüthner and the time that Wilhelm Kempff came and played the instrument in their home in New Orleans. It has been well over 35 years since he related the story so my memory is not clear on the age of their daughter Heide at the time of the event. I recollect that Heide was 12 years old. She may have been older but I am now able to verify her exact age. (This past weekend we were able to reconnect with Heide after over 30 years of trying to track her down after her mother died. She was sent the link to this blog by Curtis Institute Alumni Association when the Association had done a Google Search and had come up with a link that referenced her. This is an amazing story of being reconnected to a long lost friend, but that is not the subject of this entry. I can now verify my accuracy in memory, if need arises, via a telephone call.) Mr. Rice related that the famous concert pianist who was also a Beethoven authority came to New Orleans to audition Heide for a special teaching program that he provided in the summer time for gifted pianists. In 1957 Kempff began to give an annual Beethoven interpretation course in his villa in Positano, Italy. He wanted Heide to consider coming to Italy sometime in the future to study at the symposium. The audition was arranged and Kempff came to the Rice home on the appointed day. Heide had prepared the Beethoven 4^th piano concerto as her audition piece. She began playing the Steinway, and not too long into the audition, Wilhelm Kempff being so impressed with Heide’s playing and interpretation, moved to the Blüthner which was beside the Steinway and began to play from memory the orchestral reduction accompaniment to the concerto. It must have been a moment of intense “magic” as youthful prodigy and elder master musician merged into one glorious ensemble of music making. Heide was selected to attend Kempff’s summer session which took place when she was 19 years old.

The story of the procurement of the Blüthner from post-war Germany, the knowledge that the daughter of our best man had practiced on the Blüthner in her formative years of piano study, and the fact that Wilhelm Kempff had actually played the very instrument that Hagler was now going to sell were too many reasons for allowing the piano to be passed on to a stranger’s hands. I called Hagler the morning after having dinner with him and his wife. I told him my feelings regarding the piano and asked him how much he was asking for the piano. Without the slightest hesitation, he declared a price that was only a fraction of a token as to its real value. I thought he was kidding, but he was not. I protested that he was giving the piano away. He said that was the whole point of it. He would “give” the piano away only to a family member. He knew that we would care for the piano and eventually have the piano restored to its potential. Indeed, he had done most of the maintenance work on the piano over the years; it did need restoration to some degree. It was a vintage piano and it needed an overhaul. We paid his asking “price,” and the piano was moved to our Forest Lake home and placed in the second studio we maintained. After Hagler and Inge moved back to New Orleans in the summer of 1972, my wife and I moved to Michigan in 1973. Within a year and a half of our move to Michigan, the process of restoration began. (To be continued with the next entry.)