I received this e-mail privately from Rich Olmsted and am responding to the list with his permission as I thought this was interesting and I think contributions to the list from pianists are valuable.
At 08:22 AM 4/24/03 , you wrote:
>Dear Phil,
>
>I appreciated your (below) remarks, and think you are right on about the
>nature of the (real world) issue(s). From my own experience and in my
>discussions with colleagues (pianists all). Some observations &
>suppositions include:
>
>1.) Pianists may prefer more inertia/ heavier actions because, even if
>less inertia/lighter might be personal preference, most pianos performed
>on in the field (concert hall or other) would not match the pianists
>personal preference so... better to be able to perform on the
>stiffest/heaviest of actions (because an audience has no idea how good or
>bad (responsive) the action is). They often assume the performance is
>entirely about the pianist (with the possible exception of an out of tune
>piano) in much the same way that they often assume an out of tune piano
is
>entirely about the tuner.
>2.) Well practiced pianists tend to develop chops & can cope with greater
>inertia (they can do the heavy lifting)
I was aware that many pianists take this approach of working on a heavy action so that they can build up strength and stamina to deal with heavy actions when they encounter them. One of the unfortunate consequences of this for some pianists is physical damage. Another unfortunate consequence is that some teachers take this as some sort of mantra and tell their students to buy a piano with a heavy action so that they can 'develop their strength', even if these students have no desire or ability to be professional pianists, and the result is a piano that's a chore to play. Also, the upper limit of what defines a heavy action may be
determined by a piano action that is poorly set up, so that the pianist is building himself up more than he would need to if he got to play on actions that were well designed or set up. I'm reminded of a pianist (a young woman) I saw recently on TV playing the Rachmaninoff 3rd piano concerto, which she had presumably been practicing a lot. She had arms like a blacksmith's.
Also, my experience as an amateur pianist is that the best situation for me when playing on different pianos is for the piano to be similar to my personal piano. I have trouble if the action is a lot heavier because my muscles are not built up to deal with it. But, I also have problems controlling the action if it's a lot lighter. If a professional constantly practices on a heavy action doesn't he have some control problems when he encounters a very light or fleet action?
>These things aside, I like choices and I don't mind change IF it
produces
>a great enough return. So there is a difference between the market for
>'performing' pianists (performers at multiple venues), and the market for
>pianists who almost exclusively perform on their own instrument.
>
>What is difficult to manage is having the action change
>significantly/unpredictibly with every piano/venue.
>
>Maybe we (pianists) don't have much choice. I'm wondering if having more
>choices would just create another whole set of issues, but I think more
>choices has the potential to educate, AND EDUCATION IS KEY !!!!
>
>Best, Rich Olmsted
Good points. The sort of range of choices that I was talking about really only make sense for pianists' personal instruments or for those very few artists that get to travel with an instrument. It would be interesting to see what pianists would end up choosing for themselves if they were given some options. Performing pianists of necessity desire uniformity from instrument to instrument, since they are required to play on so many different instruments. I suppose their ideal would be a sort of 'standard'
action that would be the same from piano to piano. But what should this standard action be like? The technical community is gaining the knowledge to set actions up to give desired results rather than take whatever results from putting a bunch of action parts together. Perhaps it's time to start talking about a standard action setup, just as we have a standard pitch. Performing artists would then not have surprises when they showed
up to play on yet another instrument unknown to them.
Regards,
Phil Ford
>Phil Ford wrote:
>I think this shows that different pianists have different ideas about how
>pianos ought to feel. I think we have been lead to believe that there is
>an ideal setup and we just have to find it. I wonder if we shouldn't be
>working towards having the ability to vary the feel of the actions more
in
>a quantifiable way to give pianists more choice. Some might like heavier,
>some lighter. Some more inertia, some less. Some evenness from one end
>to the other, others a graduation from one end to the other, etc. Now, to
>the extent that we give them any choice at all, it seems to be - you can
>have this balance weight or that one. Sort of like saying, what flavor
>would you like, vanilla or french vanilla. I also wonder if having some
>of these options might change their tastes somewhat. I sometimes hear
>technicians say that pianists like 10 mm keydip, heavy actions, lots of
>inertia,
>etc. Not surprising, since that's what most of them play on all the
>time. They don't have much choice. And most of them don't like
>change. But if they were given a chance to live with some other setups I
>wonder if they wouldn't end up preferring them. (I suppose this is a bit
>like the temperament discussions).
>
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