Being called out on stage

[Israel Stein]

LIst,

About 15 years ago in Boston (Cambridge, actually - Pickman Hall at 
the Longy School) I was asked to tune for Igor Kipnis - who through 
his career performed on just about every type of keyboard instrument 
in existence. On this particular tour he was performing a repertoire 
of Beethoven's contemporaries (Daniel Steibelt, Jan Ladislav Dussek 
and such) on a 1795 5-octave Graebner Viennese action fortepiano 
(restored original with check rail added).

I was contracted to tune at intermission (unavoidable with those 
instruments) and when I came up on stage, I found a dead note.- 
Kipnis got a bit overenthusiastic at some point. He pointed it out 
and gave me his spare parts kit - he was smart enough to travel with 
one. So I had to pull the action in front of a full house (quite 
tricky with a Viennese action) and disassemble the check rail in 
order to pull out the damaged hammer assembly (he broke off the 
"beak" and the simplest thing to do was to just pull out the kapsel 
with the hammer - and slip in a spare one). The intermission ended up 
being quite long, but the crowd too it in good humor, had a good time 
getting to know each other and there was enthusiastic applause at the 
end - I don't know if it was for me or for the fact that the 
intermission was finally over.

Nothing remarkable - except that the next morning there was a 
thorough description of what I did in the Boston Globe review. The 
reviewer gave equal billing to the performer, the instrument and the 
technician. How often does that happen?

Israel Stein