Australian classical pianist on feeling the hand of God, rare instruments and the first piano to arrive Down Under
Geoffrey Lancaster recalls his ‘amazing conversion experience’ in 1976 and how he is restoring early pianos to their original glory
Gift of music I was born in Sydney in 1954. My adoptive parents flew from Dubbo, a little country town in the middle of New South Wales, picked me up and took me home. I have a country heart and a city mind. My parents weren’t musical but they realised they had a child with a musical gift. When I was five, they bought a piano from an estate auction. It was an upright American-made piano from 1927 and my whole world changed. They found me a piano teacher in a convent. I’ve been blessed with good teachers all my life.
When I was nine, we moved to Canberra. I thought we’d moved to paradise because in those days it was utterly green. Even now it’s like living in a botanical garden. Eventually I found another piano teacher who was brilliant. I stayed with him until I left home to study at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music.
Instrument of God I had an amazing conversion experience in 1976. A girl at university was a Pentecostal Christian. She got a message from God to track me down. Her parents held a prayer group meeting at the time I visited. I confessed that I had been manic depressive – at times incredibly elated and at other times rather depressed. She said, “I think we should pray.”
I thought, “Oh no, she’s a religious nut, I’ll go through the motions and then I’ll run screaming into the night.” Then I felt a hand on the back of my neck, pressing my head forward. By the time this had finished, my head was between my knees. I said to God, “If this is anything to do with you, I’ve got to know now.” In that instant, I experienced something that felt as though I were a glass of water being filled up from the bottom to the top.
The girl stood up and prayed in tongues. She was given a translation afterwards and she’d said, “My son, my son, I will hold you in my grace and favour forever. I will never leave you or forsake you.” This is what happened on Pentecost to 5,000 people at the same time. It was quite common in the 1970s. It was one of God’s strategies for the renewal of the church.
The so-called early music movement – music from the past played on instruments for which it was originally composed – had begun in the early 1960s. When I said I wanted to take up early piano, it was laughed at
Keys to the past Not long afterwards, I had another life-changing moment, walking down a street in Sydney. I walked past an antiques shop and saw an old piano in the window. It turned out the antiques dealer had a private collection of 50 early pianos, from the 1790s through to about 1850. I had wanted to study harpsichord at the conservatorium, but I knew at that moment that my life’s calling was to play music from the late 18th and early 19th centuries.