The Piano That Purred

During his time in Britain, Sharkey played on "some decent pianos, and some truly dreadful ones."

It's a grim decision no musician should ever have to face: If you want to keep playing a beloved instrument, it will have to suffer an irreparable change. For Jeffrey Sharkey, director of Peabody Institute, that decision came in 1989, and it involved his beloved ivory-keyed Steinway S grand piano, which he had played since age 12.

After graduate school, he made plans to move to England to be with his now-wife Alison Wells, a member of Peabody's cello faculty.

"I wanted to bring my piano over," he says. "I had one year to do it without paying an import tax because of my visa's window with Her Majesty's custom and excise regulations—but the U.N. had imposed a ban on importing ivory." And there were no exceptions, even for the Steinway's documented and legal 1940s-era ivory.

"Customs had the right to confiscate the piano if they wanted to," he says.

He couldn't take that risk. "So I had the piano shipped to Steinway, and they put on plastic keys. The 88 ivory keys are now in my dad's house," he says, all smashed and rendered unusable during the difficult removal process.

Sharkey's Steinway S was one of the many, many pianos he played during the 13 years he spent performing across the United Kingdom. His favorite? "At London's Wigmore Hall, they have a nine-foot Steinway, and it felt like I was playing a Rolls Royce," he recalls. "The instrument's palette of color made it an absolute joy to play. It just purred."

Sharkey founded and toured with the Pirasti Piano Trio across the U.K. and U.S.; the trips across Britain were memorable for both great performances and intriguing challenges. "I had some decent pianos and some truly dreadful ones," he recalls.

On the up side: "We would play in these stately homes, in which the owners had collections of early pianos," he says. "Back in Mendelsohn's day, the piano was much softer, and tuned to a lower pitch. It was fascinating to hear how much softer Mendelsohn's D minor Trio sounds on an early piano. He clearly wrote for instruments of his day."

But not every experience was so illuminating. He recalls one piano that had just received a beautiful French polish, but apparently had not been tuned for decades. It was unplayable, and Sharkey walked out; "My colleagues had to bring me back to finish that performance," he chuckles.

"By playing on less good pianos, I learned that I had to draw out some good quality from each instrument," he says. "I had to find a way to make it sing."