GRAND OBSESSION

We face an Estonia concert grand, placed before us at the front of the showroom, its wing raised. A shaggy-haired, long-legged young man bounds across the improvised stage as if he is on springs, halts before the piano, then takes a deep bow. Dr. Indrek Laul, a pianist from Talinn, Estonia, begins by telling us the history of the Estonia Piano Company, and explains the many improvements he has made to the piano since he acquired the company in the mid-1990s.

Then he launches into a raw, uninhibited, totally uncontrived performance of George Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue. He sways his long trunk, attacks the keyboard with loose, vigorous limbs, shakes his shaggy head, closes his eyes as if transported, and stomps on the floor. I'm startled by the vigor of the performance, and my first instinct is to dismiss Laul as just another virtuoso showoff, a practitioner of a marketing tradition that goes all the way back to Liszt.

But soon I change my mind. I sense in this performance something different, and quite rare. The theatrics are not for show, but are rather a man's inner soul revealed, utterly on display, with a sincerity that is transporting, if a bit terrifying.

Indrek Laul is performing naked. By that I don't mean he isn't wearing clothes, but that he holds nothing back. His heart is fully open and unguarded. He allows us to see the Indrek who is a big, goofy kid having a blast, full of rhythm, passionately in love. When I think of what it might feel like to play this way in front of an audience, I am both thrilled and horrified. How revealing, and how embarrassing. Laul is as fully exposed as if he were making love onstage. His energy electrifies the room, overcomes our cynicism, turns us into believers, carries us off into his palpable world of sound.

I am so moved, and in fact feel so connected to the pianist through his music making, I actually walk up to him afterward and ask, "What does it feel like to perform like that?"

Laul is standing with a small cadre of admirers, nursing a glass of wine. He looks at me blankly at first, as if he doesn't quite comprehend what I am asking. So I persist: "I would be afraid to play like that in front of other people. Don't you feel exposed?"

"Yes, I do," he replies, with a very direct gaze. If he is startled to be asked such an impertinent question by a stranger, he does not show it. "My teacher always said, 'Better ten concerts a year than two hundred.' Then you can burn onstage. You're burning the candle."

He must mean burning the candle at both ends.

"When you let yourself go like that, you become vulnerable," he continues. "You concentrate on the sound. You start hearing the vibrations and you mentally take people's concentration with you into that vibrational sound world, gracefully so. The composer is speaking through you. While you are playing, that hits you hard. And then, a day or two later, it hits you even stronger. You feel this shocking effect. It's a lasting, powerful thing."

His words remind me of an evening I played a Chopin prelude for some friends at my home, on the Grotrian, and it seemed as if arcs of electricity were traveling through the air, from me and the piano to them, binding us together through the soul of the composer. It was thrilling and unnerving. I could feel my audience having the same experience. Afterward, my friend Dan came up to me, reverently touched a key of the Grotrian, and asked, "Is this some kind of special piano?"

"What creates this experience?" I ask Indrek.

"This is something the ancient Greeks knew about," he says, leaning in close so as to speak beneath the hubbub of the gathering. "Later, we will know more, when research on the brain has reached a higher level. Then we'll understand the importance of music, and by that I mean natural music, music you hear without an electronic intermediary, when you have direct contact with the sound waves."