Summer solstice. School’s out.
My granddaughter graduates from Grade Five.
Time to spend an afternoon with grandpa.

Alexis takes piano lessons.
Just passed Grade Three of the CC exam.
Now it’s my turn to teach her something.

Using YouTube videos on my tablet –
I find pianist Yuja Wang.
“No surprise,” Alexis says – she’s seen her before.

I discovered Wang years ago, in a New Yorker essay by
the late Janet Malcolm – my favorite non-fiction writer –
who could see things that others don’t.

Alexis likes Wang’s uniquely exuberant way of bowing.
Wang’s a showperson –
as much as being an extraordinary pianist.

On my tablet, Wang plays Ravel’s Concerto in G major –  
to a live audience in Paris. I pick the very subdued
& very slow – yet haunting – middle movement.

Adagio assai: where the piano never stops.
It’s also a visual performance – as we watch
Wang’s emotive expressions while playing.

It begins with a solo piano – hypnotically building, run by run – until at 3:03, a flute enters, followed by a clarinet and then an oboe – with a counter melody; at 4:23, the strings, along with the evocative English Horn, spawn a dissonant yet tranquil tension with the piano – till at 5:32, the music mounts to a crescendo that, at 6:03, dissolves into an evocative duet ‘tween the Horn and piano; and, lastly, at 7:49, there’s a short coda of the entire orchestra and the ever never-silent piano.

Utterly 8:53 minutes of sheer beauty from Wang & l’Orchestre de Paris.

I turn to Alexis – quietly & attentively watching & listening.
“What do you think?”
Alas – and as if she reads Janet Malcolm too – she says:
“I counted seven times some one in the audience coughed.”