Beethoven, elephants, and a Yamaha b1…
courtesy of zmescience.com…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RKcks_4uLmA
Paul Barton, a 50 year old pianist fulfilled his dream, as he sat behind his piano just a few metres away from the gentle giants. He transported his piano up a mountain in Thailand – so he could play Beethoven for old, injured, and blind elephants.
A lifelong dream
“It was a 50th birthday present to myself, my wife and I have been working with blind elephants for many years, and I thought it might be something they would enjoy to listen to. I sat down and thought, what do you play to an elephant? You only get a short time, so I started trawling through my books and then Slow movement 2 from Beethoven’s Pathitique Sonata just stuck. I had to drag the piano up a mountain, I have a really bad back, but I wanted to make the effort so I could feel like I had undergone a personal challenge.”
He didn’t do it just for himself, this is part of a fundraiser for elephants, which live in a sanctuary on the mountains of Kanchanaburi, north-east of Bangkok.
It’s currently estimated that there are only 60,000 Asian elephants in the wild, 10 times less than African elephants.
