Rome on a high note

Posted on 28 August 2017

On a hot summer’s day, our columnist finds the coolest place in the city.

Rome by Luc Mercelis.

It was Piano Day in the Borghese Gardens.

I don’t know if Piano Day is a regular thing or if I was just lucky to stumble across it on a baking summer’s Sunday last month. Rome is too hot in July – the heat gathers in the great stone bowl of the city and reflects off cornices and pediments and cobbles and all the piled-up centuries, so I climbed the Spanish Steps to find the breeze that rustles the trees and catches the top of the Pincian Hill.

There were the usual people you find in the Borghese Gardens: dazed tourists wearily rejoicing to have escaped the broiling streets and incessant sights below; loving couples all hands and lips without a private room of their own; little girls on scooters; old men on benches reading paperback novels; middle-aged pony-tailed photographers leading around nervous wannabe models carrying high-heels by the straps. On a patch of gravel beside a clock surrounded by palms, a grand piano had been carried onto a rectangle of plastic sheeting, and passersby sat on cushions to listen to people play it.

Anyone could take their turn at the keyboard. There were obviously professionals: I watched a jazz guy in sunglasses play ‘Round Midnight’; I watched a fellow with a shock of snowy hair play a Bach prelude. But there were also casual pianists who just happened to be there: a quiet young man with a rolled-up newspaper in his back pocket, who bumbled and noodled over something I couldn’t recognise; a woman who was pushed and prodded by her friends until she protestingly sat down and played ‘The Way We Were’ as badly as it is possible to play it, and finished to a volley of cheers and high-fives.

I sat beside a teenager who fretted and fumbled with some pages of sheet music. I wanted to nudge him and smile and encourage him to go up, but he was too lost in his private world of dread.

Then I noticed two girls, maybe sisters. One was tall and about 12, the other more like seven or eight and was small and wore glasses. They were edging nearer the piano, ready to take their turn. The older one was cool and collected and looked serene and ready to show what she could do; the younger chewed her nails and scanned the crowd anxiously. You could see what she was thinking: are these friendly faces? Will anyone shout at me if I get it wrong? Will they boo? I tried to make my face look friendly and encouraging but not too expectant, so as to reduce the pressure. I probably looked like some kind of predator.

The older sister played something and she was elegant and accomplished but I was too nervous to listen properly. I was watching the younger one, who was blinking behind her spectacles, swallowing heavily. Would she panic? Would she run? I would run if I were her. I would run like the wind.

Her sister finished and it was her turn. She sat, and looked at the crowd one more time. She pursed her lips. She blinked slowly. Then she turned to the keyboard and started playing the ‘Moonlight Sonata’. It was a hot, bright Roman day but from her fingers flowed a cool night in a rowboat on Lake Geneva, a breeze on our faces, the ripples in the water making their own small shadows on the silver.

She finished and beamed, flushed with triumph, and bowed extravagantly to our applause – a deep bow, with one hand on her belly and the other outstretched above her head – and then the two little girls ran hand-in-hand to their bikes and pedalled away into the rest of their lives.

 

Read more in the September Getaway issue.

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Our September issue features 11 amazing beach cottages, two ways to see the Klein Karoo, a windswept 4X4 drive in Namibia, our guide to swimming in Greece and much more!

 






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