Once you play a Steinway Model-D, everything else is junk

Yrs trly has nine years of classical piano training.
It was arduous and difficult. but worthwhile.
Most difficult were 32nd note arpeggios, and Clementi pieces.
I became fairly good at it, so that by age-14 I was my piano-teacher’s number-two student.
I played Rimsky-Korsakov’s “Flight of the Bumble-Bee,” and my crowning achievement was Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue,” a piano arrangement thereof.
It was extremely difficult, heavy with syncopation.
An earlier piano-teacher was a task-master; she loved getting tears.
She dreamed of turning me into a Billy Graham pianist; glorious improvised chords and sweeping glissandos.
Flourish!
But I found myself hornswoggled by Jerry Lee Lewis — boogie-woogie piano.
He too did glissandos, which I found painfully abusive.
I lost interest as I got older.
In high-school I was directed toward alto saxophone, in the marching and concert bands.
For a while I was first-chair saxophone; a joke, since I hated practice drills.
I joined a rock-’n’-roll band in my senior year, and pretty much led it.
I was setting the beat with my boogie-woogie piano riffs, and could do just about anything if it was in the key of “F.”
We also played jazz.
I got so I could play Dave Brubeck’s “Take Five” and “Unsquare Dance.”
We had a really good drummer, and trumpeter — both excellent improvisors, which I wasn’t.
Later came college, nearby Houghton College (“HO-tin,” as on “oh”).
I lost interest in my saxophone, and put it aside.
Houghton was also a classical music school, and it had two Steinway Model D concert grand pianos.
One was semi-retired to a practice-room; it supposedly had a broken sound board.
But it sounded fine to me.
The other was their premier concert piano, on the stage of the auditorium.
Most times I played the one with the broken sound board, but occasionally I snuck time on the stage piano.
The Model D is Steinway’s premier concert-grand, the one Rubinstein plays.
Incredibly responsive.
Caress the keys, and it plays softly. Play hard and it plays stridently.
Once you play a Model-D, everything else is junk.
Plus both Houghton pianos were in tune.
What a piano! I was smitten.
“Green Onions” and “Take Five” in ringing renditions.
Also “Jesu Joy of Man’s Desiring” segued into “Louis-LouEye.”
During high-school I played various pianos.
One was a Steinway baby-grand at a country-club; a second was a Baldwin concert-grand at another country-club.
The Baldwin was wooden and dead.
The baby-grand was better; but not a Model D.
I measured a Steinway Model D before building our house; idea being to make our rec-room large enough to swallow a Model D.
Dreaming!
A Model D is a Ferrari — $100,000 or more.
That was at the old Joseph Hale store in Country Club Plaza.
They had other pianos there; e.g. a Steinway baby-grand, also a Yamaha baby-grand.
No Model Ds.
The Steinway was dead; the Yamaha much better.
But still not a Model D.
Too many fragrant memories of the Model Ds in college.
Sadly, my ability playing piano seems to have been compromised by my stroke.
And I haven’t tried much since college — that’s 40+ years ago.
But sheet-music is waiting in a bureau-drawer; Gershwin’s “Preludes for Piano.”

• Muzio Clementi.
• Evangelist “Billy Graham.”
• Houghton College in western New York is from where I graduated with a BA in 1966. I’ve never regretted it, although I graduated as a Ne’er-do-Well, without their blessing. Houghton is an evangelical liberal-arts college.
• “Country Club Plaza” is a small shopping-plaza east of Rochester.
• I had a stroke October 26, 1993.