Judge gives piano players licence to annoy neighbours
THE parents of two young piano prodigies yesterday claimed victory over their multi-millionaire neighbours, after persuading a court to relax a noise abatement order that limited their teenage children’s practice time.
Jim Carrabino, a banker, and his wife Annette, won permission for their children James, 18, and Stephen, 15, to practise on the family’s grand piano for up to five hours a day, after a judge overturned what the family said were “impossibly restrictive” controls imposed by the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea in London.
Joao Baptista, a senior executive of a consulting firm, and his partner Elizabeth Allen, had complained of being “tortured” by the “deafening sound of piano” emanating from the neighbouring £5 million home in Kensington.
Both children study at the Royal College of Music, and James was a finalist in the Young Musician of the Year competition. But Mr Baptista and Ms Allen persuaded the council to impose a noise abatement notice that limited the boys to 30 minutes of practice each per day, to be completed in three separate 20-minute sessions.
Yesterday, a judge at Westminster magistrates’ court accepted that the piano playing had caused a noise nuisance, but said that the restrictions were not reasonable.
District Judge Elizabeth Roscoe said: “Play is absolutely an entitlement un- less its extent makes it a nuisance. That does not seem to me to be the approach taken by RBKC [the council].
“Their approach is that any noise interference is nuisance and thus all must be prohibited.
“That is not the correct approach and so I find that the terms of the notice were not reasonable bearing in mind the nature of the activity.”
The judge said the pair could play for up to five hours per day, Monday to Saturday, up to 9pm, with a maximum of two hours falling after 5pm, and an extra three hours on Sunday. In addition, the boys are to be allowed an extra five hours’ play on six days in the year, up to 10.30pm, for family concerts.
In a statement, the Carrabino family said they were “delighted that the judge has today ruled in our favour and has stated that playing the piano is a normal domestic use of a family home”.
They added: “To this day we cannot understand why a simple case of our children practising their instrument at home after school has been taken so far by Kensington and Chelsea council.
“This matter has been extremely stressful and upsetting for our whole family. Our sons have lost one year of their musical education and development. We are grateful that they can now go back to playing the piano without their activities being labelled a nuisance.”
Ms Allen, a former documentary maker, said that the relaxation of the ruling was “depressing”. She said: “We are not crazy people. It’s very intrusive. It’s practising, it’s not the same as playing.
“When you practise you are not playing in concert, you are practising, you are making mistakes, it’s not like listening to a record, you have to keep going over bits to get it right.
“It affects the whole house. We can’t do anything, we can’t work, when they are playing. We can’t be in the house for five hours a day. We don’t know what we are going to do.”
‘This matter has been upsetting. Our sons have lost one year of their musical development’