The Piano, by Dr Catriona M McNeil

One of Anna and Mark's favourite times of the year was Christmas!

The following background information is by site administrator Tony Magee

Sometime during 2018, my dear friend Anna Jurkiewicz started to exhibit unusual symptoms of not being able to walk in a straight line, banging into walls and some confusion.

She was admitted to The Chris O’Brien Lifehouse in Camperdown NSW, a suburb of Sydney. Tests revealed she had developed a serious brain tumour called Glioblastoma. It was at the base of the brain.

Whilst she did have an operation to remove as much of the tumour as possible, its location meant that it could not all be removed and it grew quickly.

For a while, Anna and Mark were able to return to their home in Canberra and she had a short term of apparent wellness. But she gradually became weaker and lacked coordination and Mark rushed her back to the Lifehouse in Camperdown for further treatment. Anna eventually lost the use of her left arm.

Chris O'Brien Lifehouse, Camperdown NSW

She was then transferred to the University of Canberra rehabilitation hospital which did help her for a short time. Then to the National Capital Private Hospital in Canberra for a month. Her final two days of life were in Clare Holland House Hospice in Canberra, where she passed away on March 28, 2019.

Anna’s funeral service was held in St Christopher's Cathedral, Canberra Avenue, Forrest on Monday, April 8, 2019.

Her burial followed at Woden Cemetery.

Teaching in Ballarat and Canberra

As the news of Anna's passing became known, tributes flowed, many from past students whom she had taught at Ballarat Clarendon College and later during her 14 years on the music department of St Edmunds College, Canberra.

One particular student at Ballarat was Benjamin Northey, now a noted Australian conductor, musician and arranger. He has been Chief Conductor of the Christchurch Symphony Orchestra in New Zealand, since 2015. He is also the Principal Conductor in Residence of the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra since 2020.

On hearing of Anna's death, Northey posted this beautiful tribute:

"Dear Mark, Mum passed on this very sad news. I can't imagine how sudden this was, my deepest sympathies to you. I wanted you to know how much I valued Anna's teaching when you came to Ballarat. I still credit her with putting me so far ahead of the curve in aural training in particular. She had us doing high level melodic and rhythmic diction in the middle high school years when nobody else seemed to be doing it in Australia. Years later when I auditioned for the conducting class at the Sibelius Academy in Finland we had a challenging three part melodic dictation test as the first part of the process. I managed to be the only candidate to get a perfect score and was ultimately accepted into the class. I remembered thinking how lucky I was that Anna had arrived in Ballarat and given me such a rare and comprehensive aural training (even though I remember her being very shocked and dismayed at the general absence of proper aural training!) She was a remarkable teacher and person and I am very sorry for your loss. Hope that our paths cross at some point in the future Mark. Best wishes to you, Ben."

Throughout Anna's illness, particularly in all the different hospitals she was in, her devoted and loving husband Mark Jurkiewicz was by her side 24/7.

I travelled to Sydney and stayed in a hotel nearby the Lifehouse for a week, so I could visit every day and support them both, as well as regular visits to the three different Canberra hospitals she was in later on.

Piano students in Warsaw.

Mark and Anna both commenced advanced piano studies at the Academy of Music in Warsaw, (also known as the Chopin Institute) graduating in 1985. This is where they met.

Anna and Mark Jurkiewicz on holidays a few years previously.

Anna was a stunningly talented pianist and Mark still is. Losing her piano playing skills was devastating for Anna. Mark was also tremendously upset by this, because they often used to play many wonderful classical piano duets together at home on their two beautiful Bösendorfer grand pianos.

But there is something different about the Chris O’Brien Lifehouse to most other hospitals...

In the main foyer there is a grand piano.

Every day, Mark would go down and play for a couple of hours. Mostly Chopin and other classical music. 

Whilst I was there visiting, I played too - Gershwin, Cole Porter, Elton John, and lots of Hollywood movie themes, all of which is my main repertoire.

Dr Catriona McNeil, hearing Mark’s piano recitals most days, became more and more intrigued. Such was the effect of his piano music on her and also observing Mark playing it, she felt compelled to write the following wonderful story.

The piano

by Dr Catriona M McNeil (author and corresponding author)

catriona.mcneil@lh.org.au

Chris O’Brien Lifehouse

119-143 Missenden Rd

Camperdown NSW 2050

Phone: +61 2 85140000

Dr and now Associate Professor Catriona McNeil, Medical Oncologist,
Chris O'Brien Lifehouse, Camperdown NSW

I must confess that at first I’d been ambivalent about the piano. It had appeared seemingly without notice in the terrazzo foyer of the hospital, although someone in authority must have given approval.

It was not that there was anything novel in hearing music wafting up from the ground floor. Every Thursday at lunchtime, a roughly assembled choir of patients and supporters had met there and sung their usual playlist of show tunes and old standards, each number followed by rapturous self-congratulatory applause and laughter. 

The singing itself was not unpleasant. But I had learned to make sure that the fraught conversations of my cancer clinic did not run through lunch, lest some Broadway medley became the soundtrack to bad news.

 

The piano however, threatened to be more problematic. It was accompanied by a sign welcoming anyone who could play to do so, with no particular schedule in mind. Inevitably most clinics came to be conducted with the tinkling of the keyboard drifting in and out, although to be fair, except for the occasional person playing “Chopsticks” the repertoire was relatively non-intrusive.

It was at the end of an afternoon clinic when I first heard the man play. He’d begun with a chord in C minor and then a sudden tumbling left-handed scale. And then again. And then almost immediately came the main melody, despairing and heart-breaking. The music was at once ferocious and angry and sad. 

Drawn out of my consulting room, I walked over to the glass balustrade and looked down into the foyer. There at the piano sat a middle-aged man, in shorts and a T-shirt, playing from memory as his fingers navigated their way over the keys with the easy familiarity of speech. 

The piece of music was recognisable, but I couldn’t name it. Perhaps a Rachmaninoff. No. Maybe Beethoven. And then almost as soon as it began the piece was over. It had been breathtaking. The man stood up, headed towards the elevator, and then he was gone.

I spent the next half an hour engaged in a futile search through YouTube videos to try to find the piece of music again.  Finally I made an apologetic call to my former oncology mentor, a man who keeps a harpsichord in his living room, and singing into my mobile phone I began with the main theme, 

“Dah dah da-da daaah …. da-dah, dah dah da-da daaah …. da-dah ….” 

In reply he completed the phrase, “Dah dah diddly um dah dah dah daaah, diddly um dah dah.” It seemed I had just watched a concert pianist pour out his grief through Chopin’s “Revolutionary Etude in C Minor”, an elegiac composition from a time of rebellion and repression. It was written as an exercise to train and strengthen a pianist’s left hand with its turbulent, twisting scales. 

Over the next few weeks I noticed the man playing most afternoons. He’d place a cup of take-away coffee on the top of the baby grand and play for an hour or so – polonaises, nocturnes, mazurkas – and then he would disappear. 

I did not hear him play “The Revolutionary” again, until the day that I saw him on the ward sitting in his wife’s room as she ate her lunch. I popped my head in and introduced myself.

“I am one of the doctors here. I very much enjoyed The Revolutionary Etude you played the other day…Can you play it again one time?” I asked.

“Thank you. Of course.” And then looking at his wife sitting up on the edge of the bed at her tray table he continued, “She plays it better than I do.”

The woman turned to look at me. Her hair was short-cropped and she had a slight facial droop. And then raising her left hand above the tray table as if about to play she added, “But my left hand doesn’t work properly any more; I bring my hand down and the fingers slip off the keys.” She let her hand drop to the imaginary keyboard and then down to her left thigh.

“We’ll get some physiotherapy to get your hand strength back - I have been reading about neural plasticity,” the man said.

“Yes, hopefully things will improve with the radiotherapy and the chemotherapy,” I offered before adding stupidly, “There are pieces of music for one hand only, aren’t there – while you recover?” 

“Yes, although mostly for the left hand. Ravel composed a piano concerto for left hand alone,” said the man.

The conversation paused uncomfortably as the woman continued to look at her left hand in sad resignation. There laid bare was the early grief of the brain tumour patient at the loss of identity far in advance of the threat to life. 

There seemed such capriciousness in it – like the novelist whose cancer attacks her ability to craft language, or the surgeon whose disease renders him unable to operate. Or the change in personality endured by the friends and loved ones of so many patients with intracranial malignancy. The despair of Chopin’s Etude seemed suddenly fitting in the context of such injury to selfhood.

The next day the man was at the piano again at his usual time. We chatted briefly between pieces. The acoustics in the hospital concourse were fantastic – “Like playing in a concert hall.” Except of course that the audience-members shuffled past in white compression stockings, with rows of surgical staples winding down their necks like railway sleepers. And there was no applause save the occasional solitary echoing clap.

And then, as promised, he played the Chopin again. I listened from the balcony above as if in the dress circle, but this time it sounded different. The notes were the same but the tumult was gone. Perhaps his wife was doing a little better? Or perhaps not. Where before I had heard urgency and anger, the music now seemed to speak differently. Was it hope, or acceptance - I could not tell. But I never heard him play the piece again.

I spoke with him a few weeks later as he grabbed his afternoon coffee. There had been an operation to relieve brain swelling and pressure as the chemo-radiation had not worked fast enough, and a spell in intensive care.

“I cried when she lost her ability to play. But now I am just so grateful to have her alive,” he said. “Hopefully we can go home to pursue physio and rehabilitation tomorrow….”

And as we parted, I saw him head towards the piano, sit down and begin to play.

ANNA ALEXANDRA JURKIEWICZ

28 September 1958 - 28 March 2019

Classical pianist, teacher

and public servant.

Treasured and adored wife of Mark.

Loving daughter of Jozef and Anna Borczynski (both dec).

Much loved friend to many.

Forever in our hearts.