Concerto in the key of me
   By M. Dion Thompson
   Baltimore Sun Staff

   Daniel Hays is rhapsodizing about one of his life's passions:

   "It's not only an escape," he says. "It opens up new vistas. It's
   like, you open up a room, and then there's another door and then
   another, and it just opens up such " He pauses. What is the right
   word? A flash of inspiration pulls him to the piano keyboard an arm's
   length away.

   "Like Chopin writing about the fall of Warsaw," he says above the
   heroic music rising from his Yamaha grand.

   In a couple of days he'll be playing at the Metro Food Market in
   Hunt Valley.  Lite fare.  Music to calm the harried shopper.  Last
   month he gave a solo recital for the Baltimore Music Club.  He played
   Mozart, Mendelssohn, Chopin's "Black Key" etude.  Meaty stuff.  But
   he's tired of playing alone.  Daniel Hays wants to play with an
   orchestra, and he gave notice with a quarter-page ad in the Peabody
   News, a newspaper for classical musicians in the Baltimore area.

   "SENIOR CITIZEN ready to perform the Rubinstein D-minor Piano Concerto
   but needs an orchestra.  Can you help?"

   It is a bold, daring, audacious advertisement, a challenge.

   "I haven't heard of such an approach," says Don Manildi, director of
   the International Piano Archives at the University of Maryland.

   It's Hays' way of separating himself from the pack.  He says he isn't
   desperate.  He just wants to play this piano concerto, and he can't
   do it alone.  He needs an orchestra.  Not the Baltimore Symphony
   Orchestra, of course.  They're world class.  Hays figures a community
   orchestra might take up his offer.

   "I'm trying to get across the idea of something unusual.  Most
   community orchestras want to showcase a Wunderkind," says Hays, who
   will be 64 this month.  "So, I'm saying to the orchestra, `Instead
   of being a "me too," why don't I try something different? Instead of
   a young person, I'll put an old person up there.' "

   It would be a risky roll of the dice for any orchestra.  Hays isn't
   a name on the piano competition circuit.  He hasn't built a strong
   reputation.  He didn't graduate from a conservatory.  All that is
   standard fare for any up-and-coming classical pianist, of which there
   are plenty.

   "I have solicitations by pianists all the time.  It's a very, very
   crowded field, and it's very hard to choose," says Jed Gaylin,
   conductor for the Hopkins Symphony Orchestra.  He remembers getting
   a letter from Hays.  "Certainly his solicitation stands out."

   The Hopkins orchestra goes for high-caliber soloists, says Gaylin,
   who usually begins negotiations two years before a performer appears
   with the symphony.  Of Hays' unusual approach he will say: "I salute
   his entrepreneurial spirit."

   But who is Daniel Hays, this silver-haired retired chemist with the
   chutzpah to announce his desire to the music world?

   "I was born a very long time ago," he says one afternoon in his Towson
   home.  "The crust of the Earth was still cooling."

   Actually, 1935 wasn't too, too long ago.  His mother, Carolyn, started
   teaching him how to play piano when he was a 6-year-old in Ambler,
   Pa.  It was joyless.  No passion.  The knowledge that friends were
   outside having fun only made it worse.  Then, he says, he started
   noticing kids who were better pianists.

   "That's when I caught fire," says Hays.  "From that point on, there
   was no need for my mother to encourage me to practice."

   He poured himself into a Brahms rhapsody.

   "I might even be able to remember the first page for you," he says,
   going back to the piano and tossing off the dramatic opening, before
   offering a prim snippet from a well-known Mozart sonata.  The difference
   is striking.  It's easy to hear which one would pull a
   testosterone-charged 13-year-old.

   "The Brahms feels more like beefsteak, as opposed to frills and lace,"
   he says, blue eyes twinkling with a bit of adolescent mischief.

   His parents told him he'd need a real job.  He got one, married,
   helped raise five children.  But he never let go of the piano.
   Earlier this year, he joined the Baltimore Music Club.  They waived
   the audition.

   "I was on Cloud Nine.  It was not so much the saving of the effort.
   It was the vote of confidence, and I will not forget that." He presses
   his point.  "You don't understand.  It's not like playing at Metro
   and someone walking up to me after I played something from Broadway."

   Maybe that's part of what's behind the ad.  Maybe Hays wants a nod
   of approval from a jury of his musical peers.  He has played concertos.
   Five years ago he played the Rubinstein concerto with the Ambler
   Symphony Orchestra.  It is about all that remains of the work of
   Anton Rubinstein, a 19th century virtuoso, teacher and composer of
   no renown.

   "He had this very clear, definite illusion in his mind that he was
   a good composer, and, of course, he was not," says Hays.  "He composed
   trunks of music that never saw the light of day, dusty, dreary stuff.
   Hardly any of it survives."

   The concerto has practically dropped from the classical repertoire.
   Recordings are rare.  A generation of concertgoers probably has never
   heard the piece.

   "It's an audience pleaser, but it doesn't pose any intellectual
   challenges for the audience," says Manildi of the International Piano
   Archives.  "It makes a big splash, and if he still has the chops,
   more power to him if he can do it."

   It's flashy, full of 19th century sentimentality, thrilling scale
   runs and big chords.  It is a showpiece from another era.  Every
   virtuoso played it in 1900.

   "It's more like P.T.  Barnum with the fireworks going off.  You know,
   the kids go out on the 4th of July and look up and see all the huge
   fireworks.  This piece does that," he says.  "And if played right,
   it just pulls people up out of their seats."

   He stands, emphasizing his point.

   "Of course, I would do it for free," he says.  "If you're going to
   sit around and listen to what I want to play, I'll do it for free."

   He plays birthdays, funerals and cocktail parties for pay.  He'd play
   the Rubinstein for the pure joy of working with an orchestra.  He
   says he'd need a couple of months of hard work to get the piece firmly
   under his fingers.  He just needs a call.  If no one responds, he
   won't advertise again.

   "That starts to look like begging," he says.

   He will keep playing. After all, this is his passion.

   "It is a tonic for staying young, and I think a lot of that has to
   do with maintaining a sense of structure in your life," he says.  "I
   guess what I'm trying to say is that I feel sorry for people who wake
   up in the morning and say, `What am I going to do?' And that passion
   doesn't have to be music.  It could be chess."

   The people at the Baltimore Music Club have talked to him about
   playing Franz Liszt's Sonata in B minor, a challenging and long --
   35 minutes -- piece of music.  And, there's always the Metro circuit.

   Friday found him playing near the Butterball turkeys at the Metro
   in Hunt Valley, his four-page sheet of titles before him.  Call the
   tune, and he'll play it from memory: "Hello Dolly," "Swanee," "Danny
   Boy," Scott Joplin rags, Christmas carols, crowd pleasers from the
   classical world.  He says the romantic middle movement of Rachmaninoff's
   Second Piano Concerto always gets a comment.

"Sami Klein" <[log in to unmask]>