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Her family is developing a master plan for nurturing her remarkable abilities

Sunday, August 04, 2002

By Jennifer Lazarus

The only sound is the hum of the microwave coming from the kitchen. Through the streaks of sunlight that fill the living room of this Upper St. Clair home, he peers at her and asks if she's ready. Impatiently, she nods. He holds up a page of music from a Bach prelude for one split second before he takes it away. Then she sits down at the piano, closes her eyes and plays the song with perfect accuracy.

She is 7 years old. Musicians are comparing her to Mozart.

Before she could even speak, Bradey Walter could play the piano. At 2, she could differentiate between piano pitches. When she was 4, her father, Paul Walter, 53, a lifelong piano teacher, started teaching her the mechanics of the piano. It was then he discovered she had perfect pitch -- a rare ability to recognize the pitch of a tone by ear.

	At age 7, Bradey Walter adores animals such as the family's cat, Crystal. But nothing matches her passion for music, which is fostered by a collection of keyboard instruments, including this harpsichord -- which she's named "Harpsy" -- throughout her family's home. (Annie O'Neill, Post-Gazette photos)

Today, Bradey is able to hear more than 35 random notes played on the piano while carrying on a conversation and then play them back to perfection up to a week later. She also can scan a sheet of music she has never seen before and play it back without missing a single note.

The only rational explanation is one that has no rationale:

Bradey is a child prodigy.

It was discovered one night when Bradey, 4, who looks as if she has been ripped from the pages of the Peanuts comic strip with her long blond ponytail, big blue eyes and lightly freckled face, was sitting in the bathtub playing with her Little Mermaid toys and chatting with her mom. Her father was downstairs practicing the piano.

Suddenly, Bradey yelled from the tub, "Daddy, you're playing the wrong note."

She had made an almost inaudible distinction -- that her father was playing a song he had performed earlier, only one key higher.

For confirmation of her abilities, just ask Louis Lane, 78, retired associate conductor of the Cleveland Orchestra and past principal guest conductor of the Dallas and Atlanta symphonies.

"One immediately thinks of Mozart, the greatest musical talent the world ever experienced. And with these particular talents, she is comparable to Mozart," Lane says. "Her ability to hear clusters of notes or hear anything that is played in her presence and remember it over astounding periods of time are prodigious talents."

Another time, Bradey, then 6, was in her game room while her father was upstairs playing the piano. Although she had already proved to everyone's great surprise that she could remember sequences of nine randomly selected notes, her father wanted to test the limits of her ability. So, he played 35 notes on the piano, and just as he was about to call her upstairs to play them back, his grandson, Ryan, 2, fell and hurt himself.

Twenty-seven hours later, Bradey played every note she heard her father play the day before. Experts call this perfect tonal memory -- the ability to memorize and reproduce sounds at a later time.

"Her ear-related skills are the most unusual," Paul Walter says. "Her pianist skills are excellent, but her ability to hear and remember tones is a most unusual talent."

Even though Bradey plays the piano at a level twice her age, she is not yet a refined performer. Her innate skills, however, underscore her potential.

Perfect pitch and a perfect tonal memory are coupled with Bradey's remarkable ability to scan a sheet of music with up to 100 notes or more for only one second and play them back error-free from memory.

This upright piano is known as "Uppy" in the Upper St. Clair home of the Walters, where Bradey Walter has named the pianos that she considers to be her friends. Her father, Paul Walter, a piano teacher, gives her lessons for several hours each day.

When asked what she sees when she closes her eyes, Bradey replies, "Nothing." When prodded, the shy little girl with the iron will who never loses an argument at home, says she hears nothing, either.

"It's like I take a picture in my brain, but I don't see it," she says, as if describing the norm. "I don't see it, but I think my brain does. I think it kind of tapes it."

To anyone familiar with the piano, this is anything but normal.

Steven Smith, a part-time concert pianist with a doctorate in Music Arts and a professor of piano at Penn State University, has an ear for talent.

"Bradey can play not only correctly, but musically, with a sense of rightness in sounds, tone, clarity and meaning," he says. "It's a language she speaks."

Smith, 60, who also studied at the Mozarteum -- the academy of music in Salzburg, Austria -- had his first piano lesson at 5 and has been playing ever since. Over the years, he says, he has seen many musical talents, but few as remarkable as Bradey.

"I teach older kids, and I see a lot of young kids at contests I judge," he says. "I have seen some prodigious young children, but I think the combination of talents that Bradey shows is quite unusual."

Smith is so impressed that he has agreed to tutor her once a week at Penn State.

Peter Stumpf also is astounded by her abilities. He's never had a client with an ear as sensitive to piano tuning as Bradey. Stumpf, who services more than 1,000 pianos a year, is left speechless each time he leaves the Walter home.

"Bradey knows when a note isn't tuned exactly right. I make the slightest change on her piano, and her face lights up because she innately knows it's right," Stumpf says. "It's like when she knows her stomach is upset -- it's just that natural to her."

With 15 years of piano lessons and 15 years as a registered piano technician, Stumpf, 42, says all his years of experience combined do not equal Bradey's level of musical proficiency.

A skeptic initially, Stumpf wasn't convinced the first time he saw her play 35 notes after hearing them only once. Intensely curious, he asked if he could choose 35 notes and play them for her. When Bradey played each note back for Stumpf, he was shocked.

"I am just your Joe Average American," he says. "When I encounter Bradey, I feel like I am in the presence of greatness, and she's just a child. I believe she was cut from the same cloth as Mozart."

Music as a first language

Mozart's cloth covered more areas than Bradey's. The Austrian genius made his first public appearance at age 6, and a year later, his first published composition was distributed in Paris. He mastered the violin, the harpsichord and organ, toured across Europe, worked with a number of orchestras and, of course, composed one masterpiece after another.

Still, by all accounts, Bradey is remarkable.

Beth Leu, who has taught first grade for 23 years, has seen only a handful of students such as Bradey, though none quite as unusual. As soon as Bradey entered her class at the Ellis School in September, Leu was determined to figure her out.

So far, Leu has uncovered three facts: Bradey is some kind of musical genius who excels in math but struggles with reading.

"I noticed that with Bradey's reading, I find similarities with the children whom I've worked with where English is a second language," she says. "It's the same thing -- they have another language they've heard before. Auditorally, her skills are highly developed, but you can't learn to read like that. It also has been my direct experience that children who are gifted musically usually excel in mathematics."

With only 17 students in her class, Leu has the opportunity to get to know each one quite well. Bradey, quiet and shy in school, gets along with her classmates but typically chooses to remain on the periphery of class discussions and activities. Instead, she tends to immerse herself in her imaginary world of music.

"It pervades everything she does," Leu says. "When she writes, she will write only about a topic that pertains to music. She will write about a piano that has come to life or about a child who is performing. She is very singularly focused on music."

This musical fixation filters through her home.

"Bradeyland," as her older brother Mark, 35, calls it. He is assistant director of the Centre for International Legal Education at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law and an adjunct professor who sometimes lives with the family.

The Walters' three-story brick home in Upper St. Clair is filled with musical souvenirs, including a compact disc player in the shape of a piano that plays only classical music.

Hand-drawn pictures of composer/pianist Sergei Rachmaninoff, with the words "I love you Rachmaninoff" etched on the paper, decorate the unfinished walls, while almost every room in the house holds at least one piano.

Rachmaninoff is Bradey's favorite classical pianist, and her affection for him borders on obsession, her parents say. They think it began in her formative years when they played his music in the house. A couple of months ago, her father found a note in a cabinet that said, "Rachmaninoff, please help me to play the piano."

The grand piano that sits in the living room once hosted Rachmaninoff, who died in 1943, just five days shy of his 70th birthday. "Pian," as Bradey calls it, is her favorite piano, and also, admittedly, her "best friend."

Last Christmas, she gave "Pian" a present, as she did her four other pianos. But "Pian" is special because it is most like "us," Bradey says, with its eyes, ears, nose and mouth -- the screws that hold the piano together -- positioned the same as these human features.

Among the cast of characters who inhabit Bradeyland are "Harpsy," the family's harpsichord; "Electri," an electric piano; "Siley," a silent piano that can be played with earphones; and "Uppy," a piano that stands upright.

Bradey says she has formed close relationships with all her pianos.

The signs are all there

For a child prodigy such as Bradey, these are much more than inanimate objects.

Child prodigies are loosely defined by three characteristics, says Dr. Ellen Winner, a Boston College psychology professor whose work focuses on gifted children's artistic development. In 1996, she published a book called "Gifted Children: Myths and Realities," which examined children who are extremely gifted in art, music or an academic area.

So far, Bradey fits the part.

First, prodigies show signs of a particular talent at an early age. Bradey was 4 when her father discovered she had perfect pitch. Second, prodigies tend to learn on their own, and almost never ask questions. Leu, Bradey's teacher, is constantly prodding her to ask questions.

Prodigies also demonstrate an intense and obsessive interest in their particular domain. Everything in Bradey's world relates to music and more specifically, to the piano.

And prodigies are known as loners who have few friends, Winner says. Bradey spent a 17-day school break by herself in her playroom painting a mural, never once playing with a friend.

They tend to come from child-centered families, where their talent is constantly nurtured. Bradey has two much older brothers, and her father works with her on the piano a minimum of two hours on weekdays, three hours on Saturdays and Sundays and three hours every day of her summer vacation.

Not only do Bradey's talents demand a great deal of nurturing and attention, says her mother, Diane Walter, 43, director of pharmacy at Select Specialty Hospital of Pittsburgh, but so does Bradey herself.

"She likes to be the center of attention at home," Diane says. "Among others, she is introverted, but at home she's right there in the center. Whether she demanded it or we gave it to her in the beginning, she's always gotten a lot of attention."

Bradey is a sensitive girl with a soft, almost inaudible voice, and her demure nature outside her home draws a sharp contrast to her demanding attitude at home.

"It's definitely a challenge bringing up a child like Bradey," acknowledges Diane.

It's a challenge the Walters have met head-on. During the school year, they're constantly on the move to keep Bradey on a rigid schedule, one that takes into account other activities.

"I have a concern about balancing her childhood with the talents she has so that she is a healthy and happy child and, eventually, adult," says her mother.

Bradey also has a deep love of animals and enjoys painting and playing on occasion with her next-door neighbor, Rebecca.

	Bradey Walter's favorite classical pianist is Sergei Rachmaninoff. When she isn't playing the piano or crawling around looking for insects to observe -- another favorite pastime -- she often writes notes to the late Russian composer.

But one thing Bradey doesn't like to share is music. Whenever her father buys new music for students whom he teaches at home, she insists on being the first to see it and learn it, becoming angry at times if her father doesn't oblige.

Bradey is especially proud of a book of music she is composing as a gift for her father's birthday. However, if he is near when she is showing the book, she becomes frustrated, and she cries at the thought of his seeing it before the appointed time.

This isn't the only way Bradey's behavior typifies that of an emotionally charged 7-year-old. Like most young children, Bradey revels in the recognition she gets for her remarkable musical talents.

"I feel special at school. I feel more special than the other kids because I have a talent they don't have," she says. "A lot of the time in music class, my teacher calls on me to tell her what note it is, and she picks me the most, and that makes me feel good."

Unlike other 7-year-olds, Bradey doesn't like playing with dolls or dollhouses. She will happily abandon other activities without hesitation if her father calls her for a piano lesson.

"A lot of times I'm playing with something or watching a movie, but I will leave it because I want to take a lesson," she says.

The expression on her face and the earnestness in her voice make it clear why this little girl loves to play the piano more than anything else. "It makes me feel good. I like the sounds, and I like to play it," she says. "I feel special when I play the piano."

Although Dr. Winner's research suggests that not all prodigies go on to great achievements within their domain, for her part, Bradey has her future mapped out.

"I want to be a pianist and a composer and a conductor," Bradey says, pausing to add, with more typical child-like ingenuousness, "and I'm going to help out the veterinarian."

When asked whether she would consider Bradey a prodigy, Dr. Winner's message was clear: "It sounds to me as if she has extreme gifts in music. From the description of what she can do, I would classify her as a music prodigy."

Looking for an explanation

Until very recently, Mark Walter, Bradey's brother, was skeptical.

"I was trying to find the trick, the practical reason how she could do this," he says. "I was looking to see if [their father] was holding her arm, or even touching her arm, or giving her some kind of guidance. I have no idea if she's playing the right notes -- I lose track after the first two. So, I've gone back to the videotape and paused and stopped it and paused and stopped it to check every note. And every single time it's right."

Although he no longer needs convincing, Mark is still searching for an answer to his sister's musical genius. So far, he has designed one possible explanation, and it's not mnemonic in nature.

"When she looks at a sheet of music, she sees every single note, right?" he says. "It's not that she's memorizing it; I think that would be impossible. I think there's some kind of relational value she sees between the notes. Rather than seeing a sentence of music, she sees a page full of individual notes, each one as it compares to the other."

One thing is certain: She sees something others don't.

Jennifer Lazarus, a recent graduate of Columbia University's School of Journalism, works for Teen People magazine in New York City.

Sunday, August 04, 2002