Faust Harrison in New York
On Wednesday night I did a reading at Faust Harrison Pianos on West 58th Street in New York. Erica vanderLinde Feidner, a fine pianist who for years was Steinway’s top salesperson, was the primary force behind setting up this reading. She is friends with Michael and Marina Harrison, who very generously kept their store open past business hours for the event. It’s a lovely store, at once intimate and grand, with pianos everywhere. The pianos at Faust Harrison are scattered all over the showroom, but not in a way that feels in any way crowded or intimidating.
The chairs were set up on one side of the room, with a chair for the reader — i.e. me — directly in front of one of these gorgeous instruments.
The audience was small but intensely attentive. There was something very magical about the reading, too, because my Bloomsbury editor, Annik LaFarge, was there. It was a treat to read aloud from the book — our book — while being aware of her presence. The composer Raphael Mostel was also there, which made the evening special indeed.
After I rambled a bit, then read, I invited people to ask questions. It was singularly gratifying to know I could ask Annik and Raphael to join in with answers. When a question was asked about why I chose not to mention the now-popular notion that Gould had Asperger’s Syndrome, I was able to turn to Annik and ask her for her thoughts on why we chose to leave that out (the short answer: a posthumous diagnosis like that seems, at the very least, unfair to Gould). Similarly, when describing the scene in which, near the end of his life Gould defects to Yamaha, I could ask Raphael to fill in a few details, as he was the one who was there when it happened. Also, the pianist Carol Montparker was in the audience, and she livened up the discussion with her description of receiving one of Gould’s trademark late-night phone calls.
Sounds like it was a wonderful evening! Soooo, details on Gould’s defection to Yamaha? Please?
Well, Raphael talked a little bit about what it was like to listen to Gould try out the Yamaha that was in the store window. It was Raphael who had to bring sheets in from home to cover the windows so that no one would see Gould playing.
I have all of that in the book, but the one thing Raphael said that wasn’t in the book was that the sheets were too short and left some of the window exposed, which made Gould worry that people would peek in from underneath (i.e. get down on their hands and knees to see him play). That, it turns out, was an unfounded fear on Gould’s part.