When we think about preparing delicious food, the first most important thing is having the best ingredients. It is common knowledge. We hear about this important requirement even on television cooking shows. Ingredients must be the best, the freshest. Old, bruised, or dried up ingredients cannot be transformed into a wonderful meal even by the most skilled master chef.

Why is it, then, that we do not choose the most natural, fresh, and delicious tone when playing a piece on the piano? Tone is the basic ingredient when playing a piece, and yet everyone ignores the quality of their ingredients and seems to focus only on the tasks of learning notes and memorizing.

Let us research the most important ingredient: tone. In the case of food, we use our sense of taste to judge quality. With piano music, we use our sense of hearing to determine whether or not a tone is good (natural) or bad (unnatural). Every single day we must use our sense of hearing to develop the habit of listening to tone with concentration. Always listen, savoring with great care the tone that you make and the tone that others make. In doing this, we develop the ability to differentiate between the heartfelt, wonderful sound of music and the sound of a collision (in other words, bad tone).

A little advice at this point: to become proficient at playing the piano, we must nurture the habit of listening with great care. In order to develop our sense of taste for food, do we not eat delicious cuisine from many different sources? It is the same with the sense of hearing. First of all, listen to recordings of performances of the great masters. Search out really the best performances, in the same way you would search out fine restaurants, so you can become a person with the ability to choose really good, musical tone.

Humans are born with many potential abilities, but we must put in effort in order to develop them, otherwise they are useless to us. Our sense of hearing is one of these physical abilities. Practice listening with concentration every day, with your eyes closed and with a calm heart and mind, so that you will develop an ability that you can count on when you need it.

Without being able to listen, we cannot understand the quality of musical ingredients (the sound of music; musical tone), nor can we understand a performer’s interpretation of a piece or their skillful technique. (Someone without a developed sense of taste cannot judge the skill of a chef.) The practice of listening must be developed very carefully and from the time one is a beginner or it cannot be learned. After the ears themselves are trained to listen something more happens: you begin listening intuitively with your heart and soul. As a result, you begin to be able to add feeling and power to your natural, good sound. It is the same with cooking.

The chef creates a wonderful meal by using the best ingredients along with the heartfelt desire to give people a wonderful experience with food they can savor. It is the same with music. Just as a chef exercises his or her culinary skill, we must gather good sound to be able to perform a piece expressively, from the bottom of our heart, so no matter who is listening (or eating) they come away being revived and lucid, able to face the next day with new vitality. Furthermore, children, who are living the most wonderful, impressionable time of their lives, carry their experiences with them until they die. They thrive on the best nourishment.

People inevitably tend to be impressed merely by the size and scope of a job and lose sight of the quality of ingredients or the way things are put together. We neglect to put thought and research on the first stages of an endeavor.

We have the joy of experiencing wonderful music. With gratitude, let us think about good tone.

Those who can get a full night’s sleep on that first night in Japan (or on any night during the all-too-quick 16 days, for that matter) are the lucky ones. Coming from Eastern Standard Time, my day and night have been totally reversed. Although I fell asleep almost instantly every midnight, I woke up at around 3:30 a.m. and semi-dozed until 7 or so. This was my pattern for the duration.

In the morning, finally a shower in the strange little bathroom that could be viewed as an enormous shower stall, always separate from the toilet and the sink, with the drain in the floor and a hand-held shower next to the deep, square soaking tub.

I began feeling somewhat human again and was hungry for breakfast: miso soup, a boiled egg, toast, fruit, salad, and coffee. My friend Mitsuko went all out on that first morning, but most of the time I would be on my own after she left early for work.

There were rehearsals scheduled on that first day, and we visiting teachers had to establish our routine for getting to the rehearsal hall about five miles from town. Many were schooled in the bus route from their homestay and the details of purchasing tickets and in knowing when they had arrived at the Asama Cultural Center. Signs being all in Japanese, and bus drivers not speaking English, this was a challenge on the first trip. Some teachers, playing it safe, took taxis from the train station by showing the driver the name of the destination that they had been given in Japanese in their registration packets.

Karen Hagberg on bicycle in Matsumoto, Japan

I borrowed Mitsuko’s bicycle and braved the long, uphill trek to Asama Onsen. I was happy to be experiencing the biking lifestyle I had experienced in Japan fifteen years before, thankful for the exercise, given the long hours of observation every day, but, until I got used to it, frustrated with the one-speed bike, several inches too small. Getting to the rehearsal each day, up the long, grueling hill, was a challenge, but coming home every night, weary after hours of sitting, was a treat, coasting downhill with fresh air in my face, getting back three times faster than it took to get there. Great because by this time every night, I was very hungry.

Sitting all day every day watching rehearsals presents the challenge of learning from repetition. It is difficult to concentrate on the same thing happening over and over. American education does not utilize this kind of learning experience. It is easy to become distracted, as many of us do quite frequently. There are teachers sitting there doing other things or having conversations. Often a few teachers leave together to find a coffee shop, to purchase food at one of the two nearby convenience stores, or to do some souvenir shopping. Always a few, sitting up front, are trying their best simply to observe and to absorb the seemingly endless repetition which, if you’ve been to these rehearsals before, seems so predictable. I often wonder how much of this needs to be experienced before we really learn from it? In the midst of this very gradual, long-term process, we find a sense of progress elusive. I have often asked myself what I’m doing there. Somehow, as if magically, the more we observe the more we learn and understand. The more we can listen. The more we can hear.

Every time, I come away being impressed with the work, the persistence, of repetition. There’s a point where I stop and the Japanese teachers persist. That’s the point beyond which I want to learn to go for the sake of my students. We’re all there learning to be relentless, not to give up when we feel like it. We’re learning, yet again, that success is not giving up. Will I learn this before I die? Will I be able to teach this to others? I’ll leave Japan this time trying yet again.

The students, as usual, are amazing. They respond to this repetition. They hear themselves improving, and a groundswell of music emerges even in pieces that seemed very dangerous at the beginning.

One week into our stay, before the rehearsal we were invited as a group to the gravesite of Kataoka Sensei. We met our hosts at the Kaikan, all feeling somber, so aware of our loss. We were driven to an enormous, picturesque cemetery, high above Matsumoto, with a spectacular view of the city below and the mountains looming in the distance, all decorated with cherry blossoms.

The Japanese teachers brought equipment with which to clean the memorial stones, and many brought flowers. Each teacher individually had the opportunity to offer a private tribute at the headstone. Late-April snow began falling, and I felt a renewed bond with the other teachers. With snow on the cherry blossoms, the cemetery was at once bleak and very beautiful.

With somber hearts we descended from the spot on the hill, happy to be in the heated cars again. The Japanese teachers treated all of us to a scrumptious lunch at a nearby western-style restaurant afterwards, followed by a too-short excursion to a 100-yen shop. Then off to the day’s rehearsals.

The Harmony Hall, Matsumoto, venue of the Japan 10-Piano Concert    (File photo)

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