Play It Again: An Amateur Against The Impossible by Alan Rusbridger

2014 | English | ISBN: 0099554747 | 416 pages | EPUB | 3 MB
Alan Rusbridger is the editor of the Guardian, so has little time for hobbies, but has a passion for music and for playing the piano. At an annual 'piano camp' he is inspired when a fellow attendee plays Chopin's Ballade No 1 A piece, which inspires dread in even professional pianists. Rushbridger is now in his fifies and restarted piano lessons in his late forties. He has a demanding job in news, which is now updated constantly 24 hours a day, and has little time for anything outside work. Yet, despite all that, he decides to set himself a challange to pay the piece of music which both daunts and calls to him.

It is difficult to describe this book. It is partly full of fascinating musical digressions, from the author's attempts to find the perfect piano for the music room he is building at his country cottage, to watching other amateur pianists performing the piece on YouTube, taking lessons and discussing the piece with musicians and partly it is a news diary. During the year that Rusbridger was desperately attempting to find time for practice, he was also dealing with some major news stories, such as WikiLeaks, phone hacking and the Arab Spring. The book jumps delightfully between topics, leaving you at times impatient to leave the news and get back to the music - as I am sure Rusbridger felt himself. At one part of the book he mentions a 'sneery' article about his love of music, but you can only applaud his passion for the music (and instrument) he obviously loves and the whole book is a pleasure to read, whether you are a musician or not.