[Fountainhead, boy with bicycle, discouraged, sad, slowly climbing hill, then ... at top of rise, Roark's work is seen, a moment of quiet stunned shift, then an explosive torrent of joy. All expressed in transition between movements 2 and 3 of Beethoven's Waldstein piano sonata. Our culture needs such an experience. Since the portentous looming of WWI we have been climbing that hill, and we tire. -ls]
An eternal piano is found in wilderness, always perfect in matter and tuning, protected forever from time. Generations of human beings from primitive cultures come, touch it, sound it, hold it sacred, and never, never, never is Waldstein found. Not ever. And yet, there Waldstein waits ... for what? It waits not only for one of highest ability, for those have come, but also for such a one born into a culture through which flows a mighty river of virtue expressed in thought, art, science, law, and matter. Though Waldstein waits in that piano forever, no one but a traveler on such a river could ever bring it forth. For millennia many of high musical talent have known that piano and have been enchanted, but never was Waldstein found, never. It can bloom only in a magnificent culture, and in no other way shall it emerge. Now, think, the piano remains always. Should we be worthy, what Waldsteins await us?
Links to the following will be found at http://explorersfoundation.org/glyphery/607.html
• Martha Argerich playing Beethoven Sonata Op. 53 Waldstein -YouTube, may be an ad; may be worth it anyway
• Andras Schiff talks about Op. 53 and illustrates on piano, on Guardian Unlimited