THE GOOD THE BAD AND THE BORING

Do you remember Sparky’s Magic Piano, the tale of the little boy whose piano miraculously saved him from learning the boring pieces his teacher insisted he practised? Sparky would simply run his fingers over its keys and the instrument would magically play much more exciting works such as Chopin’s ‘Revolutionary’ Study and Waltz in E minor, Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsody No 2 and Rachmaninov’s Prelude in C sharp minor as though he were playing them himself. Both Sparky’s mother and his piano teacher were astonished by his sudden progress and promptly took him and his piano on a sell-out tour of the US. There was just one problem: after a while, the piano would no longer play, leaving Sparky to stab away uselessly at the keys to his mum’s embarrassment and his teacher’s shame.

Poor Sparky: he only had himself (and his piano teacher) to blame. He should have stuck with his boring pieces. You know the kinds of things: Friedrich Kuhlau’s Allegretto Grazioso from Sonatina Op 117 No 17…