Nelson Freire
--Carolyn J. Bennett

My first impression of Nelson Freire as he walked out on stage to play a recent concert with the Miami Chamber Orchestra was that he walked in a glow that was more than the spotlight. As he started to play, I felt that he and the piano had become one instrument. It was quite incredible. He plays with the angels. That evening the audience did not want to let him go. He gave three encores to standing ovations. I'd read in the program that he was a child prodigy. At three years old, he was playing in the garden and heard his eldest sister at the piano. He ran inside to listen. Then he played what she had played.

A couple of days after the concert, I met Nelson Freire in the salon of his hotel for this interview. Having heard him play and watched him afterward signing autographs, I had seen that he was a generous man. There were no walls between him and the audience. On stage, his music was given with love. Off stage, his autograph was given with love. He has a quick smile and a lot of warmth and good humor.

And, he's a very nice looking man although he says that he was a terrible looking child. "I remember I had a very sickly childhood because I was allergic to everything. I couldn’t eat anything. I was always in bandaids and suffering. The piano was the only thing that kept me going. If I was playing in the garden and I heard my sister play, I would come in to listen immediately. I began playing by ear."

Nelson Freire was born in the small city of Boa Esperanza, Brazil. His mother had bought the piano because she liked music and had thoughts of learning to play one day. Nelson's eldest sister, who didn't like the piano, was forced to play. Then they saw Nelson's gift. In two lessons, he learned to read music. "I wanted to read the notes so I took two lessons and I could read and then there was a teacher, a music/piano teacher, which was four hours distance from this hometown of ours, four hours to go and four hours back and there was no asphalt at that time.

"And, after 12 lessons," he continued, "my teacher told my father that he had nothing more to teach me. He told my parents they should move to Rio de Janeiro so that I could continue to study. That was a big decision for them. I was the last of five children and all the families of my father and my mother were there in Boa Esperanza.

"But," he said, "they decided to go to Rio because of me. My father even had to change professions. He was a pharmacist and in Rio he went to work in a bank. I was quite a sensation in Rio. The people were astonished. I was five years old and playing over 40 pieces of music."

Then began the search for the right teacher. It took two years. Here was this little boy with, according to him, a very big head that wobbled on his thin little shoulders and who had to practically stand to reach the pedals while he played.

Finding the right teacher was "very difficult," he said. "I had my own way of playing. At seven I found someone who was my best teacher and my best friend, Nise Obino. We had a wonderful relationship all my life. She died this year.

"She was eccentric, beautiful. It was complete. She was divorced and she smoked and I was in love. She wore tuxedos and she would say, 'Nelson. We have to talk man to man.'"

After studying with Nise for three months, he gave a recital. At 12 he won an international piano competition and at 14 he made his first trip out of Brazil to play in Vienna. "I was alone. I was 14 years old so that was quite an experience. I was not very happy because it was completely different. It was cold and I couldn’t speak the language. It was quite important because that was a development. I was very lazy at that time. Didn’t practice, but I was always making music somehow. I was buying records and went to concerts and buying all kinds of scores."

In every other way, Nelson says that he was a normal child. He went to school, played with other children, practiced two hours a day. Sometimes he brought in the neighborhood children and made them sit and listen to him play. "I had good parents. I was no 'prodigy' to them. They didn't treat me any differently from the others. I was never allowed to play football because of my hands, but everything else was just completely normal. It's very important that you have the right teacher and the right parents."

Nelson is also quite a movie fan, especially movies from the 40s and 50s. When I mentioned that it must have been wonderful knowing from such an early age who he was and what his life was going to be about, his face lit up and with a laugh, he said, "I wanted to be a movie star! I loved Rita Hayworth and Ava Gardner. Once when I was playing a concert in California, Joan Fontaine came backstage. I was thrilled."

So, from this passion for movies that began in his youth, he confessed that he always has to buy extra luggage when he's in the U.S. to take back the videos he finds he must have in his collection.

For his 50th birthday, Nelson Freire gave a gift to his hometown of Boa Esperanza. He played a concert for the people who had been there with him in the beginning. Steinway flew in a piano for the event.

As he said this, I saw that, yes, he was the kind of man who would feel that he wanted to give this kind of gift to the people of his roots. He has a unique combination of humbleness and pride and, above all, he's very honest. This is Nelson Freire. A kind and generous man who lights up countless lives with his music. Meeting him was an unexpected treat. He loves playing and he gives that love to the audience. There are no walls between him and the people listening. They are part of the magic ... and it is magic.