100 Cheer Marathon Pianist After 32 Beethoven Sonatas

When it was all over, it wasn’t Robert Haag’s fingers or posterior that was tired. It was his mind.

A pianist and dean at El Camino College in Torrance, Haag spent 9 1/2 hours Saturday--including three 20-minute breaks--playing Beethoven’s 32 sonatas on the college’s new Steinway concert grand. The “sonata-thon” not only served to help break in the piano, but was a fund-raiser to pay for the $40,000 piano and garnered $21,220.

“The fingering wasn’t a problem, but it became harder and harder to concentrate because of mental fatigue,” said Haag, confessing that during the marathon he hit a few notes that weren’t exactly where Beethoven had put them.

He said his growing fatigue was a particular problem toward the end. He played the music in the order Beethoven wrote it, and the last five sonatas are the composer’s most demanding. “Mental fatigue is not a good thing when tangling with Beethoven fugues,” said the veteran teacher and musician, who plays annually in the El Camino concert series.

Haag, in gray slacks and a sweat shirt, started the marathon at 9 a.m. and hit the last note of the 32nd sonata at 6:25 p.m. as 100 people crowded into the college band room.

“At the end, people jumped to their feet yelling and screaming,” said Mary Ann Keating, public information director at El Camino. During the come-and-go event 325 people heard the music--15 of them staying all day, she said.

One friend of Haag’s brought him cookies, and another took chicken. A few well-wishers gave him hugs and several listeners followed along with musical scores. Haag played from memory but had to ask to see the music at one point.

“It ended on a high,” he said.

Keating said $3,220 was raised at the door. “One woman put an envelope in the bowl when she went in and dropped in another $3 when she left,” she said. The bulk of the money for the piano fund came through advance pledges.

After the performance, Haag said, his wife insisted he needed carbohydrates, so they went to a restaurant for lasagna.

“Then,” he said, “we went home, and I sat down at the piano and practiced the passages that had bugged me during the day.”