Axelle Storm’s Reviews > The Piano Teacher > Status Update

[…]This provides security, and security creates fear of uncertainty. Erika is afraid that everything will remain as it is, and she is afraid that someday something could change. She struggles for air, experiencing something like an asthma attack—then she doesn’t know what to do with all this air. Her throat rattles, she can’t drive a peep out of it.’

‘[…]Those five black lines have been controlling her ever since she first began to think. She mustn’t think of anything but those five black lines. This grid system, together with her mother, has hamstrung her in an untearable net of directions, directives, precise commandments, like a rosy ham on a butcher’s hook[…]

‘She is regularly basted with the pungent gravy of musical art. Nothing alters this immovable difference: old/young. Nor can anything be altered in the notation of music by dead masters. What you see is what you get. Erika has been harnessed in this notation system since earliest childhood[…]’

‘These two lead performers intend to put on a love scene, completely private, no extras, no walk-ons, only one lead under the leaden heaviness of the other lead’