A PORTRAIT OF A PIANIST

Inspired by Bloody Daughter — a film by Stéphanie Argerich

I suggest you watch the film first—once, or even twice—paying close attention to the details.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WV2jPWyQOqE

When Martha Argerich says, “I am not really important to anyone,” while, at that very moment, her music is reaching millions—slipping quietly into their hearts, accompanying their solitude, giving shape to emotions they cannot name—I almost burst into tears, fully realising that …

Such is often the life of a pianist. Something very few truly understand—and even when they do, they rarely pause to consider it.

We move through the world in fragments—between concert halls and airports, rehearsal rooms and cities we never come to know. Our lives are stitched together by fleeting encounters: friends, colleagues, students scattered across continents, meeting us in the margins of tours, in brief interludes between performances—moments that are warm, yet always temporary.

We belong everywhere, and yet nowhere for long.

Applause surrounds us, only to dissolve quickly into silence. Conversations begin, but rarely have time to deepen. Connections are real—sometimes profound—but suspended in distance, in time zones, in the quiet understanding that soon, everyone will depart again.

And so, despite the beauty and privilege of sharing music with so many, there remains a peculiar solitude: the absence of someone to witness the ordinary days—the small routines, the unremarkable hours that make a life whole.

And then there are the endless hours of practice, stretching across a lifetime—day after day, year after year … in solitude. With music as the only companion.

To be heard by thousands, and yet not always truly seen—this is the quiet paradox a pianist learns, and ultimately agrees, to live with.

All for the love of MUSIC.

(And I would choose it all over again—in a heartbeat.)

P.S. Strangely, when you stop playing—even for a while, as I once did—life becomes surreal. Not richer. Not more interesting. Not less lonely. Not at all.

It is difficult to explain what I felt when I left it behind for several years. My relationship with the piano has always been, and remains, the most intimate of my life. Losing it felt like losing access to a vital part of myself—something no other experience could replace.

I felt incomplete, in a profoundly quiet way.

And when I began to play again … I began to live fully again.

© Alternative Approach to Music: Inspiring - Healing - Empowering, Xenia Elizabeth Zilli