I Was Able to Play on Liberache's Piano Yesterday!

Jewel encrusted cars, including a Rolls Royce; this diamond and sapphire watch (above), his piano shaped swimming pool with black and white keys (below); and a grand piano completely covered with rhinestones holding a gold candelabra; the most-bling-iest outfits ever; and, of course, his talented, over-the-top, schmaltzy playing in Vegas or on the Ed Sullivan Show.

Now they're making a movie about him... LIBERACHE.  It's with Michael Douglas and Matt Damon.

Because of the movie, there is a display of his outfits and memorabilia at Time-Warner, here in Manhattan.  I stumbled upon it doing some shopping yesterday and I got to play his rhinestoned piano a bit.  I had a big smile afterwards.

Among other great pianos, I played on Horowitz's and Billy Joel's, (when I appraised his apartment). Now I can add this to my resume, my collection, the stories I tell.

Well, it's only fair since so many famous people played on my piano, (when it was in the NBC studio).

Now, it's funny, the things or experiences we collect to make us feel special.  We are all but little Liberaches, though we may tell ourselves we have "better," less gaudy taste.  We tell ourselves this is what sets us above Liberache, and chuckle at him.

An interesting aside is the difference between the way men and women collect.  I remember reading the study by a CD company. (Yes, there actually was a time when people bought lots of CDs.)

The company discovered that male collectors would have to own every last CD of whatever they were collecting.  And they would hunt down the last, unfound disks with the purpose of Teddy Roosevelt or Ernest Hemingway going after big, African game.

Women, on the other hand, the company found out, were satisfied to buy this and that music CD, collect a bit or most of an artist and move on.  Gatherers not hunters, they.

I haven't played on enough "famous" pianos yet to feel I've got to fill out "my collection."  I haven't got the bug.  But I'd like to sit in Glenn Gould's odd chair and play a partita on his Chickering, and I'd be thrilled to play on Rachmaninoff's grand, and to play Bartok's sonatina on Bartok's piano, among my other little ambitions.  And I'm sad that they disassembled the organ that Bach played on.  That would have been the jewel in the crown of my collection - to play on the organ Bach himself played his Toccata and Fugue.  (Here I sigh, in a very Charlie Brown sort of way.)

Click Here - to hear Toccata and Fugue in D minor, with very neat graphics.  (Almost 20 million hits for this classical music piece on YouTube; it's that good.)