{"id":143,"date":"2007-05-01T11:43:48","date_gmt":"2007-05-01T11:43:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.wabash.edu\/fyi\/2007\/05\/01\/restoring-a-piano-remembering-a-mentor\/"},"modified":"2007-05-01T11:43:48","modified_gmt":"2007-05-01T11:43:48","slug":"restoring-a-piano-remembering-a-mentor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/fyi\/2007\/05\/01\/restoring-a-piano-remembering-a-mentor\/","title":{"rendered":"Restoring a piano, remembering a mentor"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\" Steve Charles<\/em><\/span>\u2014Last year, the first \u201chalf\u201d of the gift of Jill and John Failey \u201972 to Wabash\u2014a new Steinway concert piano\u2014was debuted in Salter Hall by world-renowned pianist Andreas Klein. The blend of the Failey\u2019s generosity and Klein\u2019s virtuosity as he played that new Steinway just a week before students sat at the same piano for their recitals was a great moment for the Wabash music department.<\/span><\/p>\n

Sunday\u2019s student and alumni recital celebrating the final half of that gift\u2014the restoration of the College\u2019s Bosendorfer Grand Piano\u2014was even better. (See a photo album here<\/a>.)<\/span><\/p>\n

The audience was considerably smaller, the level of playing perhaps not on par with Klein\u2019s mastery (though I\u2019ll confess to preferring our students and alumni\u2014they are remarkable musicians in their own right.).<\/span><\/p>\n

But this was virtuosity of the heart. This was a reunion of teachers and past and present students. This was the restoration of the piano my colleague Nancy Doemel calls \u201cthe best example of the way in which Wabash knits together the needs of our students and faculty with the generosity of our donors.\u201d This was a piano worn out lovingly by those students over the past two decades, restored to better than new by piano technician Michael Sowka. The worn-out pieces replaced, the once-cracked sound board repaired but still aged with twenty years of memories\u2014more sonorous, more resonant, and sweeter sounding than any new piano could be.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"For men like John Failey and his teacher\u2014pianist, Wabash librarian, and long-time piano teacher Diane Norton\u2014it was, in part, a restoration of the memory of Diane\u2019s late husband, Wabash professor of music Fred Enenbach. A gifted musician, composer, and ensemble director, Enenbach helped obtain this piano for the College in 1983. He was there when the piano arrived at the Chapel, as Nancy Doemel recalled in her fine notes for the program:<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cBy that time, Fred was extremely ill with cancer, but by the end of the delivery and tuning, he was seated at the Bosendorfer, his head bent over the keyboard, eyes closed, tears streaming down his cheeks, filling the Chapel with the Bosendorfer’s rich sounds.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"Last Sunday, those sounds were heard again. The piano come to life beneath the hands of current students, some of the most gifted pianists we\u2019ve had here in years. And alumni Steve Zusack \u201906 and Ken Turchi \u201980 returned. A student of Norton\u2019s who took up the piano late in life, Turchi played Aaron Copland\u2019s \u201cThe Cat and the Mouse\u201d (a \u201cscherzo humoristique\u201d and the way Ken played it, it was every bit as fun as it sounds!).<\/span><\/p>\n

Then Failey, who under Enenbach was one of the College’s first music majors,played the final number of the recital, as Norton turned pages for him. And when he finished triumphantly this very difficult Gyorgi Ligeti piece, his teacher by his side and beaming with pride, you couldn\u2019t help but think of Fred Enenbach, the people he loved, the lives he touched, the legacy this instrument represents, and the joy it will bring future students and audiences.<\/span><\/p>\n

Diane Norton wrote a tribute to Enenbach in the program, which I\u2019ve excerpted here:<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWhen Fred and I were married in 1972, it was apparent that he had embarked upon a strong campaign to find a wonderful piano for performances, as the instruments we had in the Chapel and Yandes Hall did not meet the needs of a growing department with an extremely active concert schedule.<\/span><\/p>\n

“When the Development Office provided the means for procuring a fine instrument, it was a dream come true.<\/span><\/p>\n

“Recently, our daughters Elisabeth Enenbach and Anne Enenbach Gering, reminisced about watching the unloading of the Bosendorfer on the mall in late summer 1983. Fred was in the local hospital receiving treatment. When the call came from professor Stan Malinowski that the piano had arrived, however, Fred\u2019s physician, Sam Kirtley \u201971, inserted a shunt in his arm, and the two of us dashed to campus.<\/span><\/p>\n

“Fred played the opening notes of a Ravel duet the two of us had performed often, then we played through our favorite duet repertoire for about two hours.<\/span><\/p>\n

“The next time I played the Bosendorfer was for Fred’s memorial concert in the Chapel in March, 1984.”<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

In photos: John Failey plays an encore, John Adams’ “China Gates”; Failey gets a congratulatory hug from his teacher, Diane Norton; Failey talks after the recital with fellow pianist Kyle Prifogle \u201909.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Steve Charles\u2014Last year, the first \u201chalf\u201d of the gift of Jill and John Failey \u201972 to Wabash\u2014a new Steinway concert piano\u2014was debuted in Salter Hall by world-renowned pianist Andreas Klein. The blend […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-143","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"w_featured_image_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/fyi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/143","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/fyi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/fyi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/fyi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/17"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/fyi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=143"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/fyi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/143\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/fyi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=143"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/fyi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=143"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/fyi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=143"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}