In 2009, I’d been living in Berlin for one year and was having coffee with a friend who’d been there for almost ten. She mentioned that around the year 2000, she’d found it fascinating that she could go to hear a world class performance at the symphony and then come home to her apartment that had no heat other than a coal oven and no bathroom—just a toilet in a closet in the hallway that she shared with her neighbors (a common East Berlin setup at the time). It was a juxtaposition that left her feeling like she had a foot in two different worlds even though the distance was only a couple of miles. I knew what she meant; Berlin was full of these kind of overlaps in time. Even in 2009 there were many.
I thought about this conversation recently when I went to see a performance by the Boise Philharmonic at the Idaho State Museum. It featured music by Brahms played on a piano once owned by Boise resident Carrie Cartee and commemorated the restoration of the piano, which had a history in the city.
The story goes that in 1877, Carrie’s dad, Lafayette, gave her permission to purchase the piano during a visit to New York City. At the time, she’d just completed music studies in Germany and was on her way home to Idaho. She ordered a Weber grand (at the time, Weber was Steinway’s main competitor). After making her selection in the company’s showroom on Fifth Avenue, the piano started its journey to Boise. This involved a trip by train to Utah and then the final ~450 miles to Boise in a covered wagon.
Once the piano reached its destination, it occupied the parlor of her father’s stately home—about where Trader Joe’s stands now—until it was donated to the historical society in 1974.
As I listened to the musicians play, I thought about the different worlds Carrie passed through as she travelled from Germany to New York City and into the wilderness of the American West. In some ways, the veil of juxtaposition continues to exist in this remote city. Cultural events at the Boise Philharmonic or the ballet happen just a few minutes away from where men fly fish in the river and mountain lions roam in the nocturnal streets.
And just one last thought about the delivery of the piano as someone who’s recently been waiting months and months for furniture and appliances to arrive: I’d love to know how long that delivery window was from the time it left the showroom until it was installed in the parlor. I’d argue that the new delivery lag times of these past three years have forced a patience on people that would have been assumed in Carrie’s time. Maybe that is why things like the piano were purchased and held onto well beyond the original purchaser’s lifetime? We are lucky that, at least for now, people like the Steinway technician Paul Schiller are able and willing to restore such an instrument.