Being called out on stage

[Willem Blees]

-----Original Message-----
From: Richard Brekne <ricb at pianostemmer.no>
To: pianotech at ptg.org
Sent: Mon, 31 Dec 2007 6:35 am
Subject: Being called out on stage


If me memory serves me right... this general thread was prompted beyond its initial couple postings by a story about Keith Jarrett being unhappy with a tuning during the middle of a concert and demanding the piano be touched up. Mr. Jarrett had, at least some years back, a reputation for being rather difficult about instruments... many would have it unreasonably so. Not wishing to take any particular position on exactly that issue... I am still curious...?
?
For those who have experienced being called on stage for your own or someone elses instrument at intermission or even in the middle of a set... how often do you feel this has been an unreasonable action on the part of the artist. And I mean even unreasonable in the more harmless sense like when a pianist just wants the added assurance of the piano being gone over during the break.?
?
Myself... it strikes me that under normal operating conditions a piano should hold tuning plenty well enough during a whole concert. I suppose by that I mean 95 % of the time at least. Being on stage after the concert starts is something I've never had to do for any of my own work... and I've come to view it as an undesirable. If the curtain was down... and audience out of eye and ear range... well perhaps it might be acceptable.... but really... it should nearly never be necessary. Extremes of climatic conditions being about the only plausible exception.....?
?
What say ye ??
?
Cheers?
RicB?
?

In a perfect world, that would be the case. But no matter how good?one thinks one might be, sometimes the piano seems to have a mind of it's own. 

When?I was at UA, the local orchestra and our department chair, a concert pianist, played the Rach 3. I tuned the piano for a recital the next day, and discovered that only one?string on one note had slipped 2 cents.

Then we had Olga Kern give a solo recital on the same piano, in the same hall, tuned by the same person. I had to go on stage at intermission to tune about 4 or five notes that had noticeably gone out.?

Go figure. ?


Willem (Wim) Blees, RPT
Piano Tuner/Technician
Honolulu, HI
Author of 
The Business of Piano Tuning
available from Potter Press
www.pianotuning.com




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