I think it started with a big fascination of the piano itself. We did not have any. At my grandparents', though, there was this huge, mysterious black thing in their dining room. Unfortunately, they lived 1300 km away from us, so I only came to see them a few days every year, when we came to visit them on summer holidays. To me, their apartment was like a palace. It was so nicely furnitured with polished floors and a crystal chandelier (which I happened to inherit many years later, so now it is in my own living room, haha) and this formal dining room and golden paint on the walls in the hall. My grandparents were teachers with a good taste in antiques.
Well, when I grew older I realized that it was not THAT big, but in the eyes of a 4-year-old, it certainly was. And so there was this huge upright piano. Somehow I learned that having a PIANO was the ultimate luxury. And that being able to play the piano was the ultimate musical skill. I could not play this thing at all, I remember fiddling a bit with the keys and having no idea at all of what to do with them. The adults were not too keen to let me play with the piano at all, by the way. I had no idea why.
On the other hand, I was an extremely careful little child, so it was not like I was abusing the instrument or something. I just could not make any music.
But from that period, I started to envy all those who had a piano back home. A friend had a beautiful brown grand piano in their living room, which I also thought looked like a palace. (They also had a lot of persian, handmade carpets hanging on their walls, and even some on the floors. Whoah!) And when I grew older and went to school, some friends got PIANO LESSONS. How blessed they were! I wanted to do that as well, I really really wanted that. But my parents did not quite understand how much I longed for doing that. Like I said, we did not have a piano. My parents were not poor or something, and they really wanted to encourage me and my sister to play instruments, but piano - no. My sister started to play the recorder at school, and I looked at her and her friend, when they were practicing together at home, with such envy and I stole the recorder whenever I had the chance and tried to play myself - finally my grandmother showed me some pity and give me a recorder of my own as a Christmas gift. Hooray!
And so my career as self-taught recorder player began ... they noticed at school that I had some "talent" and I went on to municipal music school to play in their recorder ensemble. My sister played the flute. My recorder, although it is quite a delightful little instrument, was so ... weak. My friends in the "preparation music class", where everybody started with the recorder, choose to play the guitar or the piano. And I went on with my recorder ensemble because I was good at it. Sort of. Sigh.
I used to sit at a friend when she was doing her piano homework and I kept on being jealous. I expressed clearly that I really wanted to play the piano instead, I mean, the piano was still the ultimate instrument to me. It had something that no other instrument had. They were beautiful, impressing, they could be a whole orchestra by themselves, they MADE A DIFFERENCE. I started to get very fond of piano music as well - Mozart of course, but also Scott Joplin. We had a record with Marvin Hamlisch, playing the soundtrack from "The Sting", and I believe I owe this guy quite a lot ... I wanted to play like Marvin Hamlisch. I really really wanted to learn pieces like "The Entertainer" and "Für Elise" and ... and ... I SO wanted it.
Finally my parents got it, and my grandmother promised to pay for a piano if I got lessons - there was a long queue to piano lessons, so you had to wait for YEARS. But my teacher in recorder ensemble helped me a bit, there was a sudden vacancy and they called me, one Tuesday afternoon in the middle of February, when I was 11 years old, and said "you will have a piano lesson today". When my mother came home, short after this phone call, I stood there and just gasped "I have got a piano lesson ... today!!!"
So, we went to that lesson and it was truly exciting, and afterwards we went to the piano store and said we wanted that book which I had been ordinated, and then we said "and we also want a piano".
For some reason I was not allowed to choose my own piano, my parents did. It probably had to do with the price. It came to us some week later and then we had to wait and wait for the piano tuner and THEN I was allowed to play it. And jeeez, I played like a maniac! My own piano! I played and I played and it went very well, I quickly surpassed all my piano playing friends.
Two years later, my enthusiasm had faded away rather much, I have to say. I had absolutely no intention to quit piano playing, but I did not practice that much because it was boring and hard. I had no idea that you could study piano in another way than I did, which was very much old-school. Hanon and scales etcetera. I was not the rising star among piano students any longer, because now I was compared with those who had started much earlier than me and they were much better and much more determined etcetera.
One day, in the period when I was struggling with Rondo Alla Turca, I saw a little kid, 2 years younger than me, who performed it on TV. D*mn, he was so good! I hated that kid, and I could not understand how he could play in such a secure way - when I had to perform, my hands were shaking and I always failed miserably. (I still hate performing.)
Little did I know that I would meet this kid for real some decades later, when he was a world class concert pianist and I became an admiring fan. I did not remember that old TV performance at all until he once mentioned it.
Anyway, by then I had quit piano playing since long. Or rather, I had a digital piano, formally I had NOT quit at all, I was just ... a bit passive, so to speak. But when I sat there in the audience, being a concert pianist fan, I sort of remembered my own old passion ... I became jealous once again, I felt I wanted to be a part of that piano playing. Not just being the audience. I became fond of Beethoven sonatas and ... I ... wanted ... to try myself.
So I got myself a new, better digital piano and decided to learn to play the Pathétique Adagio. I started to learn this piece. The first 10 bars took me a couple of weeks, because I had not learned anything new in 30 years ... The whole piece took me about 2 months to play in a satisfying way. I still work with the 1st movement, hahaha.
But by then I had taken off. I have been practicing like never before since then. I found myself a piano teacher, I have been to a piano summer school and I will go again this summer, and I am a hopeless piano nerd by now. I love to play the piano, I still love pianos (being in a piano store is close to heaven to me) and I constantly have different pieces "rolling" in my head while I hum and plan and get ideas about them.
I guess I'm lost forever.
And I guess that I, in fact, was born to love the piano. I will never become professional or famous or something, but I love the piano.
Topic: What brought you guys into playing piano?