Pianist Soothes Blind Elephant Trapped in Darkness With Beethoven’s Pathetique

In western Thailand just outside Kanchanaburi, an elephant sanctuary is home to a few dozen rescued domestic elephants. They’ve had a difficult time, either born into a brutal life of logging or retirees from the slightly less degrading tourism trade.

The creatures have peace and relative freedom here, and they also enjoy a perk you won’t find in the wild: classical piano recitals. Pianist Paul Barton takes his Feurich upright to the banks of the River Kwai and serenades the old and infirm pachyderms.

“Elephants are almost always hungry,” Barton writes in the Guardian this week. “If they get the opportunity, they’ll eat and they won’t stop. But as soon as I started playing, one elephant, who was blind, stopped eating and listened. We realized that this elephant, trapped in a world of darkness, loved music. From that day, there was never any concern about disturbing their peace, and that was the beginning of it all.”

The pianist is acutely aware of the risk to his own person. “I continue to play for these elephants that run free in the sanctuary, though I could be killed at any moment. It seems to be the male elephants, the ones who are moody and dangerous, that listen to the music the most. I have faith that the music somehow calms them.”

There are about 7000 elephants in Thailand, with half of them living in the wild. The other half are either exploited as tourist attractions (though Thailand has been slowly improving conditions for this unhappy lot) or living large in sanctuaries. A lucky few dozen are treated to regular live concerts.

Watch a bull elephant mesmerized by Beethoven’s “Piano Sonata No.8 in C Minor” here.

Photo credit: Nicolas Axelrod / The Guardian