As Asakura played, Viator stood behind her, making notes on the music in pencil. Today she would play it on Viator’s biggest pandemic purchase - a seven-foot Yamaha concert grand piano.īut first they talked about Beethoven - about how when he wrote the piece, he was losing his hearing, threatening his connection to other people and to his art. It is long and complex, and Asakura had worried Viator could not always detect over FaceTime a delicate change she had practiced. They had been working for five weeks on Beethoven’s 13th piano sonata, opus 27, No. He challenges Asakura to channel that understanding into her playing, she said, and along the way, he has become a friend, “almost a family-type relationship.” Viator likes to talk about composers - “not as busts on a fireplace” but as human beings, he says - and how their life experiences come through in their music. She has had various teachers, but none like Viator.
Viator handed her the coffee, and they clinked mugs.Īsakura, who works for the Inter-American Development Bank, has played piano since she was a child in her native Japan. “You look so good!” Viator said, as they hugged. On the counter was a white mug for Asakura, who was about to arrive for her first in-person lesson since March 2020. Now it was early May, and Viator was standing in his kitchen, holding a yellow mug of coffee. The studio began to come alive again this spring, as Viator and his students got vaccinated. Technology hasn’t really caught up with it.” “It just doesn’t sound as good over remote. “For someone in my shoes, the mourning is not just because I love these people,” said Viator, 36. Many improved, Viator said - technically, at least, because they had plenty of time for exercises. All stuck with Viator, attending lessons online. Viator prides himself on those connections: In normal times, he keeps tissues handy during lessons, because students regularly pour out their hearts to him.īut for most of the past year, his studio - a chic condo that is also his home - had been bereft of students and their music. It is a path to connection with his students - the kind he had with his childhood piano teacher, whose art-filled home in Biloxi, Miss., was a sanctuary for him. “That beautiful tone.”Īsakura, 44, said she missed Viator’s coffee, and she was only half-joking. “It’s been a real loss to me not to hear that tone that she has,” he said.
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