U for Upright
‘A sort of musical fungus attached to the walls of semi-detached houses in the provinces’ is how celebrated conductor and fount of bons mots Sir Thomas Beecham once described the upright piano. In ‘U is for Upright’ there’s one attached to the wall in the childhood home of concert pianist Jonathan Biss, another played by Pierre-Laurent Aimard in a pizzeria which becomes an unlikely Youtube hit, and a third in a London pub which helps oil the wheels of a convivial evening.