I never thought you could get injured playing the piano!

“I never thought you could get injured playing the piano!”

That’s what I hear whenever I tell people about my latest little niggle or slight ache or totally agonising pain which has come (probably) from playing.

One of my former piano teachers, Lucy Colquhoun, warned me that, having taken up the instrument so late in life (aged 49) my body wouldn’t be used to the stresses and strains that playing any instrument places on the body.

I joked that I must be the only one of her pupils to whom she said, ‘Can you please do less practice!’

Sadly, it’s no joke and the pain brought on by overplaying can be excruciating.

And not being able to play at all for a few days, weeks or months also leaves a huge hole in any musician’s life—amateur or professional. Music becomes a part of your day, a part of your soul and without it, you feel lost and horribly unsatisfied.

Yes, one can study away from the keyboard (looking at the score, listening to recordings of pieces you play or might want to play, reading about the story of the composers you like and what made them write what they wrote) but there is nothing like playing.

I have, in my short life as a piano player, suffered from: peddler’s knee, Rachmaninov wrist and several instances of nasty neck pain.

The big stretches in Rachmaninov’s pieces (he himself had famously large hands) are hard enough to achieve once in the performance of a piece but when you’re learning that piece and repeating that stretch, it starts to tell.

As does the repetition involved in any Philip Glass piece. Rehearsing is about repetition and when you are repeating repetition (as in most Glass), it’s a recipe for potential musculoskeletal disaster.

Currently, my neck pain—possibly, I’m told, also from poor posture at the keyboard and perhaps straining my head forward to look at the music (and from learning two pieces by Rachmaninov and three by Glass)—means that I may have to forget any involvement in this year’s Ludlow Piano Festival at which I had planned to play in several events in the lead up to the festival itself and in two events during the actual five-day fiesta.

And I’d also very much hoped take my turn on the street pianos—for the fun of it and, obviously, just in case Mika and Lang Lang were spying on the street pianos from inside Ludlow Museum.

Fortunately, we aren’t short of brilliant pianists to enjoy. My absence will not be noticed.

But I have concerts coming up in Church Stretton and The Vale of Evesham in July and may now struggle to be ready for them.

I will see my specialists, do my physio exercises, rest, listen to the help already offered by many professional friends who’ve suffered with injuries and hope for the best.

Maybe I should have stuck to stand-up comedy; it’s hard to injure yourself standing at a mic and talking.

But, then again, I’m sure I could find a way…