According to pianist Mritunjay Sharma’s parents, he started playing the harmonium before he started speaking and by the time he turned three, he was playing complete tunes on the instrument.
Today, the 19-year-old B.Com student of Shri Ram College of Commerce holds the Guinness World Record for the longest marathon playing keyboard/piano that lasted 127 hours eight minutes and 38 seconds.
The teen had in October beaten the record set by Polish pianist Romuald Koperski for 103 hours. The video-recording of the performance has been certified by the Guinness World Records recently. Mritunjay was not allowed to repeat the tunes once played at least for the next 24 hours and he was allowed a five minute break after completion of every hour.
The marathon pianist, who likes to play Indian classical tunes, folk tunes and contemporary tunes from film scores, was mentored by Sudhanshu Bahuguna, who has mentored musicians including Kailash Kher.
Mritunjay said he first got to know about the record when he was in Class IV, but started working towards breaking it only two years back. “It was a tough challenge. I practiced for about 72 sessions of 40-100 hours each to train myself. The toughest part was to train the body and mind to overcome fatigue and I turned to a selection of ragas to help me battle the tired mind, body and emotional stress,” said the newly-minted world record holder.
The training began by compiling a selection of tunes so that he would not run out of material to play and then came the challenges that anyone training for a marathon faces.
“The feeling of patriotism helped me though the training. India is a country of so many people and everybody should strive to hold a record in their respective field. The record books can be rewritten with Indian names in it if we all work to make a name for ourselves in the world,” he added.
Mritunjay said once he achieved his target, all the negative aspects and sacrifices made to train were forgotten and he went from sleeping barely a few hours a day to sleeping for eight hours at a stretch.
The pianist has been working on compositions to be used as therapy for children with autism. However, he has not stopped setting goals for himself and is now gearing up to play 2,500 notes a minute to concentrate on speed after his marathon endeavour.
The current record is held by a Hungarian pianist, who played 765 notes in a minute. Mritunjay is also planning to increase his repertoire by training in playing western classical tunes.
The teen had in October beaten the record of Polish pianist Romuald Koperski (103 hours)
