Andreas Konig only came to live in Delhi in 2024; by 2025, he won the Delhiite Lifestyle Award. This pianist, originally from Germany, has been teaching students at the Delhi Music Society. He has a following on YouTube, and it is clear he is an inspiration to students. Harsh Sharma, one of his students, explains that he was keen to just get his examination over with, and had planned to practice rigorously and take it. Andreas, however, was keener for the young musician to enjoy his music, perform well and take the examination at a more relaxed pace – after all, “getting the exam out of the way” was not really required. And when Harsh Sharma thought about that advice, he felt it made sound sense – and he is now glad that he did not race to just finish his examination.
It’s clear Konig fully deserves that lifestyle award – he is eager for his students to live a life of joy and contemplation, not get swallowed up by the race for qualifications of different sorts. Konig, besides being a piano teacher, is a performer who has shared the stage with prominent orchestras. He is also a yoga practitioner qualified to teach Iyengar yoga. It is as if his body and mind, kept in tune by regular yoga, leaves him free to perfect his music.
Before arriving in Delhi, Konig studied piano in Germany and Spain. He is keen to travel across India and perform, and would be happy for opportunities to take his piano playing to audiences across India.
There are schools of music in the bigger cities of India – Kolkata and Bangalore, besides Delhi. However, there is not even one piano manufacturer in India and all instruments are imported. The piano is also considered a luxury item, and attracts the highest rate of Goods and Services Tax. Piano lessons, thus, are usually the preserve of the rich in India.
However, Child’s Play India Foundation in Goa, founded in 2009 by Dr Luis Dias, is attempting to broaden music education – it offers lessons in piano, violin, flute and other orchestral instruments to children living in children’s shelters and from economically disadvantaged families. The aim is to foster discipline and self-esteem in children, and possibly also open new avenues that could lead to careers in music. There are music schools in the northeastern states too, where Western – even if not classical – music was introduced by Christian missionaries over two centuries ago.
Music – and Western classical in particular – has been shown to have a range of important health effects. The health researcher who goes by the name Vigilant Fox recently put out an article listing some of the effects of classical music; and one did not have to be a performer to reap the benefits. Listeners appeared to benefit too: people prone to seizures showed reduced brain epileptic activity; the brain’s communication network grew stronger as neural connections were strengthened; anxiety, stress and pain were reduced; mood improved; the brain’s reward system was activated, and pleasurable “chills” were experienced.
There are sound reasons to make music education more widely available to India’s children; more adults could be encouraged to take to music too, and perceptible shifts could occur in addiction and the sense of hopelessness and lack of beauty that young people experience. At a time when economic activity is sluggish, state governments must consider pooling resources to set up at least one manufacturing unit in the country dedicated to making pianos. It would be a horrible shame for such a vast country as India to enhance defence production at huge expense, while neglecting completely the manufacture of something that brings as much joy as the piano. For over 50 years, Pearl River in China has manufactured pianos – and many pianos that sound in India are now Pearl Rivers.
One reason Andreas Konig cannot perform as easily across the country is also that just arranging a piano at some venues would be expensive. That is a problem to be solved with some imagination.
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*Freelance journalist
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