Several years ago, I was preparing for a concert that featured the Grieg piano concerto and found my thoughts turning to my beloved mother, Lisa. I remembered the last time I had played for her.
Although she had fought against it with everything she had, my mother had grown weak and fragile from illness. She yearned to sit at the grand piano in her living room and play, but she could no longer manage it. Instead, she watched and listened as I played.
As I began, I was a child again, her student, watching her at the piano, hearing her play those same heroic passages of the Grieg with a passion and intensity I knew would be difficult to match. My mother had lived an incredible journey and she had infused her music with everything she had experienced: her childhood with loving parents in Vienna before World War II; her escape to England aboard the legendary Kindertransport; her struggle to study her music while a war raged around her; and always, her endless fascination with that ramshackle building at 243 Willesden Lane, the hostel in the London suburbs where she lived as a young refugee separated from her family.
I watched my mother’s eyes as I played for her, and remembered how I loved my piano lessons. They were more than piano lessons—they were lessons in life. They were filled with stories of the hostel and the people she knew there. Her stories were my folklore, filled with bits and pieces about a kind lady named Mrs. Cohen, a mysterious suitor named Aaron who whistled the melody of the Grieg as a signal to meet him, and members of a clandestine committee named Gina, Gunter, and Paul. Sitting at the piano, I would close my eyes and listen to her gentle voice, and see the world and the people she had grown up with and loved.
Most of the names you read on these pages are the real names of Lisa Jura’s friends and family. Aaron’s name has been changed, because this character was an amalgamation of several boys who were influential in my mother’s life. Mr. Hardesty’s character, too, represents several Bloomsbury House officials. The facts and conversations that follow reflect my mother’s recollections, although I realize that some of her stories were clouded by time. In the places where there were gaps in her memory, my present-day research has filled them in. The spirit of the story is all hers.
When I finished playing for my mother that final time, she nodded her quiet approval and I moved to her bedside and sat there as she had sat at mine when I was a child. At the end, she was, I believe, at peace.
My mother was my greatest teacher, and my sister, Renée, and I became concert pianists because of her.
I know that Lisa Jura Golabek’s spirit continues to live, not only through me, but through all those she touched. Her legacy has inspired my music and my life and continues to do so every single day. I pass along her story in hopes it may enrich the passion and music that lie in each of us.