This article appeared in Steinway Magazine - 2009. Reprinted with permission.
David Syme in Ireland
By Vera Marie Badertscher
Photos by Patrick Henaghan
Steinway Magazine
The craic fills the kitchen of the house by Bantry Bay in southwest Ireland. "Craic," pronounced "crack," means lively conversation, fun, and friendship — qualities that abound in Ireland. People generally go looking for craic in a pub like the well-known McCarthy's (Pub and Grocery Store) down the road in Castletownbere. But on this Sunday afternoon, people gather in Suzanne and David Syme's spacious kitchen awaiting his fortnightly piano concert. They come for ceoil agus craic (music and fun).
The Beara Peninsula, off the beaten track of the tourist trails in Southwest Cork, reaches out into the Atlantic. "Next stop, Boston," the residents like to say. Locals will tell you to skip the over-touristed Ring of Kerry and drive the scenic Ring of Beara. In this wild land of gray limestone outcroppings, sudden cliffs, and a thousand rocky inlets, there is music in the sea pounding the shore, in the voices that speak in the lilting sounds of Gaelic speech, and in the very air when the wind hurls up a storm.
Music lovers in the small fishing village of Castletownbere have little classical music in their own backyard. Bantry House, the home of West Cork Chamber Music Festival, stands an hour away from this fishing village of about 1,000 people and it takes about three hours to drive to Cork City, which has an orchestra and renowned music school. Consequently, when Syme, a Steinway Artist from America who lives half the year in Ireland, started living room recitals, he found an eager audience.
- Guests gather for music and fun while Steinway Artist
David Syme performs one of his quaint living room recitals.
When Suzanne returned to her second home in Ireland after being widowed, "I was embraced by the community," she says. These people thought her brave to be living there without a husband, and when she met Syme several years later, there was a collective sigh of relief.
"The first summer that David came, everyone was so happy for me, and they knew all about him," she says. "He couldn't figure it out. He would walk into town and they knew him."
Syme says, "I had been here maybe five days and the word had gotten around about who I was and what I did and I was asked to do a concert to help raise money for a school in Africa and I agreed. The encore was 'Danny Boy,' which they sang along in Irish. It was very moving."
He came to see that reaction as characteristic. "They are very emotional, very passionate, wear their hearts on their sleeves ... people respond emotionally rather than cerebrally. "Wherever I am, I'm looking for somewhere to play," he says. "If I'm not performing, I shrivel up. I need to be playing. It's like oxygen to me.
"We decided to do it at our home," Syme says, speaking of the living room recitals. "We already had a very large living area that seats 50 to 60 people. We have plenty of parking space. We have a piano there. We have me there." While most pianists depend on a publicist to put out the word about concerts through mailings, newspaper advertisements, and radio announcements, David and Suzanne took a more personal approach in Ireland. "We have a sign out on the road — a chalkboard with the times of concerts," Syme says. They also distribute flyers at various businesses. On the Sunday of a concert, David drives into town to leave "Concert Today" flyers at the SuperValu supermarket, where everyone shops after Mass.
When people get the word, he says, "We'll be sitting in our kitchen ... and people come to the door to ask if there are seats available for the concert."
From late July through August 2007, he performed five concerts. The audience heard four Beethoven sonatas, the Schumann Carnivale, Bach, and many works of Frédéric Chopin and Franz Liszt. He added December concerts, and repeated the summer schedule in 2008.
- Syme's solo recital times are listed on this
roadside chalkboard.
He says, "I don't get any less pleasure than out of a concert in a large hall. It is like they are coming into my workshop." Although southwest Ireland draws increasing numbers of travelers from the United States and other countries with its scenic splendor and ancient sites, Syme did not come to Ireland as a tourist. He has not traveled widely in Ireland outside of the Beara Peninsula. As he says, "I love where we live in Houston [where he plays on his 1904 Steinway Model B] and I love it here, so when I have time when I'm not working, I like to stay where I live. It feels like a vacation to just not travel."
Two hours before the concert in his home, Syme has still not settled on the program for the day. "I have a huge library of music in my memory," he says, savoring the freedom of the home recitals. He says that the experience makes him want to do more. "Like learning the Rach 3 [Rachmaninoff's 3rd Piano Concerto in D Minor] three years ago. ... I was in my 50s. Most people say you should learn it in your 20s because you have to play it a hundred times to get it right." He first performed it in Tucson, Arizona, and will be repeating it in May 2009 with the Birmingham-Bloomfield Michigan Symphony.
Starting at the age of 3, Syme could play almost anything he heard, which baffled his parents when they tried to find a piano teacher. Each time they met with one and asked what they would teach the little boy, Syme would listen to the teacher play, and mimic the music back. When he was 13 years old, he says, "Somebody finally got it through my head that if I was going to be a concert pianist, I needed to take lessons."
At that point, he decided he needed to work very hard to catch up, and he set himself a practice schedule of 10 hours a day in the summer time, leaving a couple of hours for baseball. Steven Larsen, director of the Champaign-Urbana and the Rockford (Illinois) symphonies says, "He is the only pianist I know who has developed a career after that kind of beginning." Despite this unorthodox start, Larsen praises Syme's ability to "make a performance of the whole" rather than "expecting to be accompanied." Larsen goes on, "He gives a very exciting, organic performance." From child prodigy to youthful forays into rock and jazz, to cocktail lounge, radio, and TV shows, to his main job, performing in classical concerts, Syme has played many variations on his pianos. His present schedule varies from major concert halls in the United States and Europe to Steinway galleries and living room recitals.
Even during his detours into popular music, Syme stayed fixed on his main goal — becoming a classical concert pianist. Syme studied with Jorge Bolet at Indiana University, Ozan Marsh at the University of Arizona, and Sascha Gorodnitzki at Juilliard. He later studied with Lewis Kentner in London.
At Indiana University, he played with rock and jazz bands and struck up a lifelong friendship with rock drummer Kenny Aronoff. The drummer has played with the Rolling Stones, John Mellencamp, and many other major stars. Although they went in different musical directions long ago, Aronoff says, "When I hear his CDs, I can hear his passion — he lets himself come out through his fingers."
Aronoff believes, as Syme does, that his youthful excursions into playing rock music have made him a better classical performer. As Aronoff puts it, "In rock and roll venues, people can integrate with the performer and the performer with the audience. It is not proper for the audience [at a classical performance] to yell, 'Hey, good job. Fantastic. I love your pizzicato.' In rock and roll, people can do that, and I can say, 'I like you man,' and throw a drumstick to them. David did that [played for that kind of audience] ... once you have had that experience, you can bring that with you to an orchestra setting."
After three years of intense study, Syme went to the Frederick Chopin International Piano Competition in 1975 and made the cut from 120 to 40 people. Because of the quality of his performance, judges invited him to play a concert at Chopin's birthplace. He calls it "one of the highlights of my life."
He continued to study, and three years later won a slot in the International Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow. "When I lost that, I headed straight to Hazard, Kentucky," he says, in one of his self-mocking moments. There he hosted a popular TV show.
- The Symes live part-time in their Bantry Bay
home in southwest Ireland.
The varied background has contributed to a wide variety of interests. At home in Ireland, when he is not practicing, which many times takes place in the middle of the night, Syme switches between reading Vanity Fair magazine and various newspapers, watching TV, and listening to CDs. He likes artists from his youth like the Beatles or the Rolling Stones or The Band or Delaney and Bonnie. He delights in deconstructing the lyrics of popular music or finding traces of classical music hidden in tunes.
"When I listen to classical piano music, first is the late Jorge Bolet, whom I met when I was 16. He was considered to be a definitive Liszt player. Three pianists of the past whose recordings have influenced me are Arthur Rubinstein, Sviatoslav Richter, and Ignaz Friedman ... I am greatly inspired by the work of my longtime friend Stephen Hough, who is pursuing a career of such breadth and magnitude that he will be remembered in the same light as the all-time greats such as Rachmaninoff and Hoffman."
Half an hour before starting time, Syme is running through pieces on the Steinway in the middle of his living room, still dressed in his shorts and casual open-collar shirt. Women in stylish white summer dresses arrive and gather in the kitchen, where Suzanne is putting out plates of spice cake and chocolate cookies.
He disappears into the master bedroom and re-emerges in a black suit with a red kerchief in pocket. People gather in the living room and chatter. Many have been here before. One of the men present designed the house. The doors onto the patio let in the warm summer air. The cows in the field below occasionally play a tuba note. The aroma of the freshbaked desserts floats in from the kitchen.
About five minutes after three o'clock, Syme sits at the Steinway. "Ladies and gentlemen, we are about ready to get started." Before he starts on the first movement of a Beethoven sonata, Syme has a sartorial question. "Do you mind that I'm not wearing any socks?" It is a typical, humorous, and unexpected diversion from the more serious business at hand. They do not mind, as they sink into soft white chairs and sofas that ring the Steinway.
First comes Beethoven's Pathétique Sonata. Next, he plays his favorite composer, Chopin. Two études from Opus 25. He goes on announcing the titles, telling stories, and apologizing for the run of sad music. "The next piece is one of the saddest things ever written by Chopin," he says, "but it makes me happy to play it. The Nocturne in E Minor."
After a break, Syme returns to play "Romanza," originally written for guitar, and then three pieces by Liszt. "The next two," he announces, "are fairly energetic. Not sad. The Transcendental étude in F by Liszt, called 'transcendental' because Liszt was the only one who could play it." Audience applause indicates that Liszt was not the only one who could play it.
After the recital, people mill around, buy CDs, drink another cup of coffee, and chat. As locals and tourists drive out the country lane lined with drooping red flowers of foxglove, Syme is already thinking about how his performance went today as he prepares for some summer trips abroad and the next living room concert.