A professor. A teacher. An older cousin. A friend’s parent. An after-school club leader. We’ve all had individuals throughout our lives, especially in our formative years, who had an outsized impact on our personal development.
Dr. Cornelia Vertenstein, beloved and revered piano teacher, was such a person. Undoubtedly countless students across the country are mourning her loss.
Hers was a simple set up, in a modest Hilltop ranch home in Denver, Colorado. Two rooms, three pianos, devoted to music. Her passion for classical music was transmitted not only through her rigorous teaching, but through that very setting. Shelves filled with sheet music and records. She taught students about Beethoven, Bach and Rachmaninoff. But more, she taught her students about practice, commitment, achievement. She personified that rigor was essential to mastery.
Most of her lessons were devoted strictly to the student — depending on his or her level — plodding or zipping through a piece. But oh, the excitement when Dr. Vertenstein would sit at the keys, demonstrating a difficult passage or technique. To see her elegant hands tickle the ivories was inspiration indeed. If one reached the highest level, of playing with Dr. Vertenstein, that was an experience to be treasured.
But that was the pinnacle, not the norm. Dr. Vertenstein placed her students at the center, not by coddling them, but by encouraging them and yes, holding them to high standards, but always with a sticker for a job well done. The goal every student pursued was participating in Dr. Vertenstein’s awaited recitals, an opportunity to demonstrate the effort of the past months.
These recitals were permeated by the old-world European air that Dr. Vertenstein, as a Romanian refugee and Holocaust survivor, embodied. The dress was formal, the posture was upright, the technique precise. That she was always called “doctor” contributed to the respect her students felt for her, and the music she taught. What happened in that modest Hilltop home was a serious endeavor, not a casual hobby.
We all have these people in our pasts, who we always remember long after they played an active role in our lives. They are also remembered long after they are gone. Dr. Cornelia Vertenstein was such a person. Her memory will be treasured.
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