Definition of "tickle the ivories"

[…] Charles Jarvis, the Philadelphia pianist, […] tickled the ivories with old time unction and gave some of the audience the impression that Philadelphia was really a musical city.

1890 December 13, Hans Slack, “Real Music in Baltimore”, in Marc A. Blumenberg, Otto Floersheim, editors, Musical Courier: A Weekly Journal, volume XXI, number 25, New York, N.Y.: Blumenberg & Floersheim, published 17 December 1890, page 627 (number 565 overall)

In music the Company now stands very high. Our singing strength surpasses anything known in the history of the command. It was feared that there would be no one to spar with the piano when Charley Moran left us, but you just ought to see the Leussen brothers tickle the ivories.

1900 February, George De C. Curtis, The Seventh Regiment Gazette: An Illustrated Magazine Devoted to the Interests of the Seventh Regiment and the National Guard, volume XIV, number 4, New York, N.Y.: The Seventh Regiment Gazette Association, page 86, column 2

I don't think your musical friend is much on the grub-box. Has to keep her hands white to tickle the ivories.

1915 October, Willa Sibert Cather, chapter XVI, in The Song of the Lark, Boston, Mass.; New York, N.Y.: Houghton Mifflin Company […], part I (Friends of Childhood), page 112

In stroll Harpo [Marx] with his $12,000 harp (and he plays it, too), and Chico [Marx], who tickles the ivories in anything from jazz to Beethoven, and the party is complete.

1930 December 5, “The Screen: At the New Rialto”, in George Carter, editor, The Evening Journal, number 150, Wilmington, Del.: The News-Journal Company, page 41, column 2

[Henry Louis] Mencken, more a music lover than a musician, sometimes tickled the ivories in a repertory of Beethoven, Bach, Strauss and W[illiam] C[hristopher] Handy.

1984 June 9, Ben A. Franklin, “Mencken monument spurs ‘frenzied piffle’”, in The New York Times (section 1)‎, New York, N.Y.: The New York Times Company, archived from the original on 2021-08-10, page 9

The highlight of these evenings was when the band set up— […] Men in gold lamé suits with crushed velvet collars and black trim on the pockets took the platform—you hesitated to call it a stage—and started tickling the ivories, plucking the bass, and—our favorite of all—brushing the snare drum: Ch-che-che, ch-che-che, ch-che-che.

2005, C. J. Hribal, “You Know What They Do with Horses, Don’t You? Holding down the Fort, the Boat, the Heart”, in The Company Car […], New York, N.Y.: Random House, part I (Observations from the Wayback), page 139