Once more with feeling

I HAVE TO admit that as I drove up to Cambridge for the seventh Oldie Cambridge Piano Weekend, I did rather ask myself why on earth I had booked the damned thing. Sometimes I feel that I'm like a parent who, on deciding that something would be 'good' for me, books for me to go to improving events which I don't really want to go to. There were the life-drawing classes - to which I always turned up late. And the course of swimming classes, run by a ruthless man who almost made me, at 60, cry.

So, 'Another fine mess you've got me into,' I muttered to myself, as I struggled to find Magdalene College, with the awful knowledge that, although it wasn't remotely compulsory, I was expected to play a piece in front of everyone else.

At school I did actually reach Grade Six, and my teacher, Mrs Kelvin, a splendidly emotional Austrian concert pianist refugee, had been taught by Theodor Leschetizky, who had been taught by Czerny (of 'exercise' fame), who had himself been taught by Beethoven. My problem was that Mrs K, being emotional, flew into the occasional rage, which terrified me, and my memories of piano lessons and practice were always accompanied by a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach. It was this sick feeling that accompanied me as I made my way, suitcase in hand, to the student accommodation provided in Magdalene College and then found my way to the dining-room.

But from the first bite of oeufs Benedictine with hollandaise sauce, accompanied by a couple of glasses of delicious white wine and served by candlelight in Magdalene's 16th-century hall, I realised that this weekend was destined to be not gruelling competition, but sheer, relaxing pleasure - and so it was, as we discovered the next morning at the first of Professor Raymond Banning's brilliant classes.

His credo is simply: 'Relax, relax, relax. And then relax some more.' One of our number told me over coffee that her piano teacher had told her that the piano was like a dog. 'It knows if you're frightened.' And it seemed to be Raymond's aim to get us to realise that the piano was, in fact, a pussy-cat.

'A lot of adults are able to play extremely well and could reach an advanced level, but there comes a point when they start struggling with it and it becomes a torment,' he said. 'What I want to do is to get you into a new way of approaching the piano.' He then cheered us on our way by telling us of a pupil of his, Vera Dawson, who was having lessons with him at the age of 98, and giving performances to her friends at 100.

There are only three rules, he told us: 'weight, relaxation and economy of motion'. In many ways the lectures were rather like lessons in Zen Buddhism, and as we each went up to play our piece we were, almost to a man, told to drop our shoulders, drop our wrists, relax, play slower, and listen to each note.

We 35 oldie piano students were an odd bunch. Two sisters, one of 64 and one of 55, played a Debussy duet together that they'd last played when they were young children. Another brave lady who ran the gauntlet told me she'd only started learning the piano five years ago. Some oldies, even those on sticks, staggered up to the piano, only to sit down and play pieces steeped in pain, passion and love. There was a great variety of composers featured - from an odd piece by a Czech composer called 'The Barn Owl Has Not Flown', to pieces by Chopin, Lennox Berkeley, Charles Aznavour, Rachmaninov and (in my case) an easy-peasy Schumann.

In our lunch hour we could, after a sumptuous buffet meal, race round Cambridge and visit the T-shirt slogan shop, the Magic Shop, the excellent second-hand bookshop opposite, a very good branch of Hobbs, and even have time for a quick jog around the Backs and King's College; and then it was back to videos of Vladimir Horowitz, whose wrists hung so far off the piano that they practically reached the pedals. Paderewski, on the other hand, played wildly, like a take-off of himself.

It wasn't all work. Richard Ingrams, who was a genial presence during the whole weekend, interviewed Carl Davis, the conductor and composer, a man who was not only extremely entertaining but also sported satisfyingly mad composer's hair, and the whole weekend was rounded off with a wonderful recital by Peter Katin, who played, among other things, the most stunning collection of Schubert's Impromptus. Somehow we also managed to pack in a sing-song round the piano with veteran Jack Thomson, who got us all carolling songs like 'Underneath the Arches', 'You're the Top', and 'Anything Goes'', a visit to the Fellows' Garden, several chocolate croissants and a lot of laughs.