Mixtapes

Audio / Video files of songs mentioned in this story are collected here.

... Harriet, seated at the piano in her dressing-gown, had turned on him the face like a skull which she had worn ever since she had woken that morning sick with the sudden knowledge that the way she had always played the Fugato was wrong, and wrong, and wrong again. 

For after I had put down the telephone it occurred to me that I would not find it easy to sleep, and I remembered that that morning when I was combing my hair the manner in which I played the Hammerklavier Sonata had seemed most shameful, and I resolved to practise it.

“Critics have said I might be remembered with the greatest, with Busoni, with Schnabel, were it not”—and she brought forward her hands and laid them on the desk that he might have the best view of them—“were it not for these!”

I will sometimes go and spend an afternoon playing to him the Scottish airs, the Songs Without Words, the melodies from Balfe and Donizetti, which he dotes on, and yet draw from him few thanks enough;

I could do more than hum, I could sing. ‘There is a tavern in the town, in the town, where my true lover sits him down, sits him down…’ Why, I remember the words and the air to perfection. I must close my lips tightly lest I disgrace myself.