MADRE MIA: Biography Of Isabella Stengel Aka: Our Mother Of Perpetual Motion

Product Description

My mother is and was a formidable woman. She succeeded where many women failed to balance the life of a mother as well as a performer of high standing, as well as a beloved piano teacher, sought after by many pupils in three continents.How did she achieve this balancing act? The following 100 stories will trace her life across ten decades, and I will let the reader decide which of her many strong qualities made it possible for her to achieve every modern woman’s dream: to fulfil her procreative role in the world, and be recognized as an artist of high standing.It is a story of courage and resolve, of successes and failures, but it encompasses what my mother is and was from 1931 through 2026. She has supported my efforts as a struggling artist for most of my 66 years in existence, while performing her balancing act between her piano career and her needy children.Where there are some chronological gaps in the narrative, I have included some historical insights in context so as to offer the readers some idea of what my mother lived through over 95 odd years…thus far.The stories included in this biography are like a mosaic of memories that describe my mother’s personality evolving across 95 years of her life. This isn’t a biography of a pianist spanning her career of performance endurance: it is a complete picture of Mother as a person, a woman, a wife, a pianist and performer, an accompanist, a botanist and gardener, cook, nurse, midwife, an entertainer, a piano teacher, a philanthropist and finally a convalescing mother reflecting on her life by being bed-ridden for five years by a crippling stroke.My siblings would prefer me to idolize her and gild her memory with carefully censored stories that make Mother look like a saint and a heroine, a victim of the Patriarchy and my father’s neglect. I prefer to paint a complete picture of her life, with every stroke and every colour of her chequered landscape. Her piano music was unique: she was one of the greatest and most musical pianists I have ever heard. Her pianistic sound was unparalleled: she made the percussive sound of the piano sound lyrical, ephemeral, expressive and versatile, and the Romantic repertoire, as well as the Beethoven Sonatas she performed throughout her pianistic career place her as one of the greatest exponents of the ‘piano sound’ and the ‘transcendence of technique’. She was a pianistic artist and genius of the keyboard.I hope to convey to the reader how entertaining she has been to us all both as a pianist, as well as an eccentric woman who proved to us that she could be both a great pianist as well as an effective mother of six of her children and grandchildren. Read more