My take on some of this is that the pianist is working to play to please the audience, and the reviewers. I think they feel that getting good reviews is their job, my job is to fix the piano. I can't blame them. Good gigs and good reviews are hard enough to get. The pianist I was referring to before, gets wonderful reviews and keeps a very busy concert and recital schedule. I'm certainly not the one who is going to tell him how to improve his playing! dave *********** REPLY SEPARATOR *********** On 2/20/2003 at 3:18 PM Jeff Tanner wrote: >Dave Porritt wrote: > "He says that your piano means nothing if your forte is not forte. As a >result, both he and his students do break a lot of strings." > >Hi Dave, >I can take my stereo speakers rated at 40 watts each and hook them up to a >250 watt per channel amplifier and get forte I couldn't get from my 40 watt >amp. I can throw them away afterward, but I got forte. > >There is a difference between forte and using the piano as a punching bag. >When they're breaking strings at an abnormal pace, that's abuse. It is not >at all musical. > >Dynamic levels are relative. If the pp is being played more like mp or mf, >then, yeah, the player is going to have to beat the hell out of the keys to >get that ffff. > >And I see pp playing being played at mp/mf here too, and I see a lot of >ffff playing when it only says ff. And just why is it they won't practice >with the lid up and learn how to play a real pianissimo. Then they won't >have to beat the keys so hard to hear that the piano is trying to play >fortissimo, but they've got the mute button on? > >We now live in a world where we can turn our car radio up to ear piercing, >attend concerts where sound reinforcement systems are designed to blow the >top off the venue, and put on a set of headphones and turn the music up so >loud that people across the room can hear every note. The piano was never >intended to compete with this, but I think a good many don't seem to >realize that. > >I also think a lot of performers don't realize that the piano is much >louder out in front, than at the keyboard. > >mythinking >jeff > > >_______________________________________________ >caut list info: https://www.moypiano.com/resources/#archives _____________________________ David M. Porritt dporritt@mail.smu.edu Meadows School of the Arts Southern Methodist University Dallas, TX 75275 _____________________________
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