Doug This is an excellent post from a fellow I was fortunate enough to benefit from many keen insights in the early 90's whilst I resided a time in Seattle. I see you are up to your same standard of reflected thought and commentary. The points you make as to paying attention to both great pianists wants, and to the type of location...and the need to find a usable commonality for each situation I found particularly well put. I'd also have to agree completely with your assessment of present day NY Steinways. I was greatly privileged to be invited from Europe to join this years NY Steinway Oberlin Seminar at Oberlin Conservatory of music and was able to take a very good look at several of the instruments they had there from all periods of production through the last 100 years. One of the most enlightening experiences was a side by side comparison of an older NY D that had recieved a new Steinway style soundboard by an independent rebuilder in the area, a brand new Hamburg D, and a NY D from the 80's I believe. Part of the exercise included a significant change in the halls acoustic made possible by an automatic system of movable acoustic panels. The NY D that had roughly 30 years on it was the weakest by far... but both the Hamburg and the rebuilt simply sizzled with life and exuberance. Each had their own value tho, and frankly even tho the D from the 80's was weak... it did quite well indeed depending on the acoustics of the room. Experience with pianists revealed a wide split as to which was best with no real determinant consensus. I also had the opportunity to see some selection of other size instruments from various ages... and found that many of the criticisms I've heard about NY S&S were rather overstated to put it mildly. No doubt there have been ups and downs and short commings through the years... but nothing on the scale I get the sense some convey in various forums. I agree entirely also that lacquered hammers vs hammers a'natural represent two distinctly variant approaches with correspondingly variant results. The key word being different. I make no value judgment here other then to state my own well known stance that my personal preference is for the natural variant. To each their own by all means. As stated elsewhere, I've come to realize the real world of acceptable piano sound amoung pianists is far far wider then many piano technicians seem able to digest or accept. Beyond all this, your final paragraph sums it up quite nicely indeed. Cheers RicB I agree completely that one should develop a voicing style down pat. But I'd recommend listening carefully to what the great pianists want and then adjusting for the circumstances. One certainly doesn't want a stage piano in a small practice room, but having a related response character will serve the students better when they do get on stage. I'd like to point out that from what I hear, even the european artists are finding that they are pleasantly surprised at the current NY products. It is essential to remember that the quality of preparation makes all the difference in pianists' reactions to the piano (I know I'm preaching to the choir here!), but given comparable preparation, the artists are starting to realize that the individual piano characteristics are more important than whether it was built in Hamburg or NY. This is, I believe, an objective of the company in their current product development--less difference between NY and Hamburg. The quality control in NY is way up, and it shows. The strong preference for Hamburg pianos developed, IMHO, due to the unfortunate shortcomings in quality control in NY through the 70's that have been the subject of much work and investment on the part of Steinway. In an odd sort of way, I actually feel the beneficiary of some of those issues in that I've been able to see the results of all sorts of interesting attempts at overcoming them. Many have not worked particularly well, but when one is desperate enough, well, y'all know what I mean. It would be most interesting to find pairs of pianos that go through hammers at about the same rate and try competing products. That might actually give us a handle on useful service life. I've always had the sense that the NY hammer, properly set up, is a bit more durable than one with minimal or no lacquer. But I have no real data. Unfortunately, we don't have time even to identify such instrument pairs here... I would like to suggest to all that the lacquering of a softer hammer is in some ways an essentially different approach: it makes a composite material. There are many composites in our lives these days, and they present somewhat different design and implementation needs and opportunities. This is why the NY hammer doesn't really do very well with voicing techniques appropriate to non-lacquered hammers, and vice versa. I'd like to suggest that if we could somehow measure hardness and resilience, and maybe a few other characteristics, of hammers, we would find quite a lot of similarity from end results that are tonally similar. This takes me back to a notion that has served me well: that the primary goal in setting up a piano is to maximize the available tonal range. It seems to me that if I work toward having the color change as much as possible with volume, and exaggerate the shift, most artists can easily find what they want, and are therefore happy. The piano can sound quite different from performance to performance, but that is the artist at work. Doug Wood On Sep 15, 2007, at 9:42 AM, Richard Brekne wrote: > Sounds to me like the Ronsen Wurzen II's are very comparable to the > Renner Wurzen II's we get here in Europe. At least Davids > description fit to a tee. In response to Doug Woods post I'd like > to just say that I for one have no doubt Steinway NY gets the sound > they want with the hammers <<as is>> they supply. I adhere to the > contention that no matter what you do... lacquered hammers will > always produce a significantly different character then needled > unlacquered hammers. My personal preference is for the latter. > That said... to each his own. The comment about S&S catering to > the overwhelming majority of pianists in the world is a curious one > tho in this context... since apparently a significant if not > overwhelming majority of these prefer the Hamburg in most > instances. What that in the end says about hammer voicing > preferences I'll leave up to the individual to ponder. > > As far as Bacon versus Wurzen II. I have to say that I have run > into Wurzens II sets that were very very very soft. I'm not sure > as to the claims that this has so much to do with the felt itself > as to the degree of pressure is used in the pressing. I've yet to > see a side by side comparison of these two no doubt fine raw hammer > felts ready for pressing to see which is denser from the get go. > I'd wager however that either could be made either too hard to too > soft for just about anyones tastes. > > All this goes back to my origional post on this matter. Get your > own voice and voicing style down pat. And select the hammers that > YOU prefer working with to get it. It is not IMHO even remotely > neccessary to adhere to someone elses idea of what any given piano > should sound like. The window for acceptable voicing is actually > quite large... which means for every 10 pianists you wow.... there > are at the very least another 10 who will be less then impressed. > > My take.. :) > > Cheers > RicB
This PTG archive page provided courtesy of Moy Piano Service, LLC