Probably the last time I heard this particular recording on this exact album was close to 40 years ago.  It’s an album I grew up with, introduced to me by my dad.  The Rachmaninoff Piano Concerto No. 2.  My dad loved Russian romantic music, particularly Rachmaninoff and Rimsky Korsakov ,and his favorite thing to do was to listen to them as loudly as possible so that you not only heard the music but you could feel the music as well.  You needed the music to resonate inside you.  The concerto is especially memorable for me because it was a love both dad and I had in common.  It was playing over the house speaker of the funeral home for dad’s visitation.

My dad wasn’t an overly emotional kind of guy, at least on the outside.  He was your typical stoic German, wearing sunglasses if there was the slightest chance of eyes watering.  And music was just about the only thing that did that to him.  It didn’t matter if it was marching band, a symphony orchestra, a big band singer or a broadway belter, or my brother playing drums with a rock band – they all got to him emotionally.  He had great taste in music.

Dad was my first music teacher, having me listen to orchestral recordings at a young age, learning about the different instruments and teaching me to read note values and note names at the kitchen table.  He came from a family of serious musicians, but he was not a musician himself, although he did play trumpet for a while as a kid.  He also sang and made a little record with some of his buddies at one point.  But life got in the way and so music became more of an escape for him – something to listen to after work in the evenings to relax.  And he shared this love of listening with me.

So this Christmas, my sweet husband brought back some of the past with my dad by giving me a turntable, which are much fancier than they were when I was a kid.  I had picked up a bunch of dad’s vinyl after my mom passed away and they’ve been sitting in a closet for years collecting dust.  But not tonight.  Tonight through the magic of bluetooth I was able to hear the same album dad and I listened to together so long ago.  All the scratches still where I remember them, every nuance of the pianist and the orchestra the same.  This was an album I used to listen to to go to sleep at night, the third movement being my favorite.  I sat and closed my eyes and went back in time.

I don’t tend to remember a lot of my childhood for whatever reason, but one of the things that does stick with me is music and I’m grateful for it to help me remember my relationship with dad. Whenever I have a mountaintop musical experience now, I think about how much dad would have loved it, even just hearing about it.  He never got to see me become state president of our music education association or now representing the region at the national level, but I think he would have been proud.  I never had the chance to share with him my experiences with the Met and Julliard or seeing shows on Broadway. Even though he wasn’t a musician, he passed on the musician genes to both me and my brother and I think he would have been pleased that music is an important part of our lives.

So as much as I fuss about technology being a pain, tonight I am grateful.  Tonight I got the chance to spend time with my dad again for just a little while listening to Rachmaninoff.