DECEMBER 27, 2022 – Going back years, our neighbors and we been quite familiar with rabbit holes. In our case, the openings are at various locations around the base of our back porch. The rabbits are ubiquitous—down the holes and throughout the backyard and gardens. Inexplicably, the twitching-nosed, standing-eared, bug-eyed creatures stay clear of the front yard.
The deepest and most numerous rabbit holes, of course, are on the internet. Today I peered down one of these holes, then slid all the way in. I didn’t land at the bottom until 90 minutes later, when I hit the “submit order” button to purchase Lili Krause: Hungarian Pianist, Texas Teacher and Personality Extraordinaire by Steve Roberson, a student of the “Diva of the Piano—on and off stage.” (my description of her). Impatient for delivery of the book, I found a preview (the first 47 pages) online, and devoured it in a single go.
How and why did I wind up down this rabbit hole (price of admission: $11.18 plus tax; free shipping)? Here’s how—all quite innocently . . .
I’d poured myself a cup of Java, not realizing the connection that “Java” would have to the impending adventure. I then repaired to our sitting room, where the morning sun streams in (sky permitting) and opened my laptop to work on today’s post.
Several topics had been auditioning inside my head, but none had yet been selected. To move things along, I called up some Mozart. Specifically, on YouTube, I searched, “Mozart piano . . .” Auto-text added “. . . concertos.” At the top of the list was “Mozart – Lili Kraus – Piano Concertos No. 20 [ – ] 27.” I clicked on the nearly four-hour collection.
Before returning to the audition, as it were, I listened to the Mozart and read the fast moving narrative that appeared on the screen that accompanied the music. The text was all about the compositions; nothing about the performer.
“Lili Kraus” wasn’t a totally strange name to me, but beyond the fact that I’d heard of her, I couldn’t have told you a thing about her other than that she was, well, a pianist. Enter . . . the rabbit hole.
On a short Wikipedia abstract, I learned some basic facts about her: born in Budapest in 1903; died in Asheville, NC in 1986; after WW II, became a citizen of New Zealand; was artist-in-residence at Texas Christian University from 1967 to 1983; studied with Zoltán Kodály, Béla Bártok and Artur Schnabel; concertized throughout the world in the 1930s; and most startling, with her husband and children, spent over two years in a Japanese prison camp in . . . Java.
I could hardly leave things there. By the time the sunbeams had moved from one window to another, I’d devoured numerous articles about her and ultimately found Mr. Roberson’s biography of her and the online preview mentioned above. The book was riveting on multiple levels. The rabbit hole had most definitely led me to Wonderland. (Cont.)
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© 2022 by Eric Nilsson
