Smith: If only this grand, old piano in Cotati could speak

In 1934, the year Adolf Hitler became Führer, the baby grand piano that will accompany a renowned chamber-music trio Saturday night in Cotati was an engagement gift in Germany.

Arthur Salm presented the Steinway to his fiancee, Erna Mann, in Cologne. When the Nazis ratcheted up their persecution of Jews, the Salms shipped the piano to the Netherlands for safekeeping.

They’d been married for two years and Erna was pregnant with their first child when, in 1938, the German police arrested Arthur and imprisoned him at Dachau.

Four weeks later, Erna devised and pulled off a strategy for getting him released. They fled to the Netherlands and hid for a time on the same street, they learned later, where Anne Frank and her family were living secretly. Then the Salms moved on to Belgium and then England.

Late in 1940, they received papers for emigrating to America. They settled in Chicago.

After they war, they learned that, remarkably, the warehouse in Rotterdam that stored the piano had come through the waves of bombings, first by the Germans and then the Allies.

Erna and Arthur had the piano shipped to Chicago. As with much of post-war America, the couple flourished. Arthur became a pioneer in stainless flatwear and renowned for his world-class stamp collection. Erna performed on the piano at home and in Europe.

Arthur died in 1988, Erna in 2001. One of their four children, David Salm, set roots in Sonoma County and played a leading role in the creation of the Holocaust & Genocide Memorial Grove at Sonoma State University.

One of David’s sisters, Susan Salm, is an acclaimed cellist who long ago toured with her mother and since 1975 has performed throughout the U.S. and Europe with the Raphael Trio.

It doesn’t normally play small venues, but on Saturday night the trio will perform Beethoven and Dvorak at Cotati’s Congregation Ner Shalom - long ago the Cotati Cabaret.

Naoko Tanaka will play her violin and Daniel Epstein will be on … The Piano.

Erna Salm’s children agreed a while back to donate the storied and well-traveled Steinway to Ner Shalom.

If you’d like to hear it, you can obtain tickets for the 7:30 p.m. performance by visiting shalomevents.ticketleap.com/raphaeltrio/ or by calling the congregation at 707-664-8622.

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DENNY MARTIN keeps attracting accolades and honors seven months after the death of the beaming, helpful and masterly wine judge and retired Fetzer Vineyards winemaker.

The California Exposition & State Fair will bestow to Denny its 2018 California All Star Award. The new honor posthumously recognizes exemplary service, innovation and leadership in the state’s wine industry.

Denny’s wife, Carla Filgas, and children, Astin and Remy, will accept the award at a dinner for the fair’s wine judges on March 27.

Also! The Davis-based American Society for Enology and Viticulture is reviewing applications for its very first Dennis Martin Enology Memorial Scholarship.

The scholarship is open to students of wine at colleges across North America. The dollars essential to the scholarships are coming mostly as memorial gifts from admirers of Denny Martin.

You can reach Staff Writer Chris Smith at 707-521-5211 or chris.smith@pressdemocrat.com.