From the better-late-than-never school of piano careers, there is Robert Silverman. The Montreal-born, now Vancouver-based pianist didn't start studying piano seriously until he was 23 - ancient by classical-music standards. He settled into his full-time teaching job at 35. He made his New York debut as he was about to turn 40.
Today, 30 years later, he wishes he'd stayed in New York. At least for a while.
But he returned to Vancouver, where he became an influential teacher at the School of Music at the University of British Columbia and had a stint as director of the program; he made some recordings - including all 32 of Beethoven's piano sonatas; and continued to perform and make a name for himself in Canadian classical-music circles.
He may never have made it to Carnegie Hall, but he did make it to 70 - and tomorrow he will play a concert at Vancouver's Chan Centre for the Performing Arts, to mark the milestone birthday. Just don't mistake it for a retirement concert.
"I took a three-month hiatus [from piano]in the first part of this year," Silverman said earlier this week in his Vancouver living room, which is dominated by a Steinway grand (one of four pianos in the house). "I realized Bob Silverman needs something to do. I can't putter around in the garage, that's for sure."
Silverman got an early enough start at piano. Despite protests from the piano teacher next door, his parents signed him up for lessons when he was just 4, after seeing how he was drawn to classical-music programs on the radio. By his second lesson, Silverman could identify notes by ear. He could read sheet music before he could read words. But even as he continued with his lessons through high school and university, he never considered a career in piano.
It wasn't until he was three years into an engineering degree at McGill that he realized he was making a mistake. One day, at home studying, he simply closed his books, went upstairs, and told his mother he hoped she didn't mind, but he was going to drop out of engineering. "Well, it's about time," she told her son.
After switching to Concordia to study arts, and on the advice of his piano teacher - the celebrated Dorothy Morton (the daughter of Silverman's childhood piano teacher) - Silverman decided to try practising full time. He began winning grants and competitions. He went to Vienna to study. At 23, he was far older than his classmates, who included the now acclaimed Japanese pianist Mitsuko Uchida. She was 12.
"It was really, really late," he says. "It's not the way to do it."
After two years in Austria, Silverman returned to Montreal and completed a music degree at McGill. After stops in Rochester, N.Y.; Santa Barbara, Calif., and Milwaukee, Wis., he wound up in Vancouver, with a faculty position at UBC's School of Music.
In May of 1978, Silverman travelled to New York, where he performed for two straight Sundays at Lincoln Center. The recitals were well-received. The New York Times called him "a polished and thoroughly finished technician" and an "extremely articulate [virtuoso]" The review went on to call his performance "immaculate," "noble" and "an intellectual reading." Reviewer Peter G. Davis continued: "Rarely, if ever, can this densely written [Liszt]sonata have been presented so lucidly."
So it is not all that surprising that when asked if he has any regrets about his career looking back, Silverman admits he wishes he'd stayed on in New York, maybe taken a year of absence from UBC (from which he's now retired) - and tried his luck at a full-time concert career. "I think that would have been the time. There was a crossroads there. And I didn't take it."
But in the same breath, Silverman wonders what his life would have been like had it worked out - the constant travelling, living out of a suitcase, not feeling rooted. The students he wouldn't have been able to guide. The friends he wouldn't have made.
"I've really lived a balanced life and I don't think that's so bad. You can't have everything and you make choices. The only thing I would just tell my younger self if I could write him a letter [would be] 'Now is this really what you want? Because you'll probably get it.' Every time you choose something, it means you don't choose something else."
Robert Silverman performs his 70th Birthday Concert at Vancouver's Chan Centre tomorrow at 3 p.m.
Marsha Lederman