[CAUT] Speaking of stability......

[Richard Brekne]

Hi Dennis

I dont find there is that much of a difference in tuning a large concert 
instrument compared to a smaller one in terms of tuning stability.  I 
find myself being a lot more picky for a 9 foot Steinway then a 6 foot 
Petrof.... but the basic job of doing a 4 cent pitch change is basically 
the same. I know many report such the same kind of experience you site 
below and there is a lot of musing as to why... but this is simply not 
in my experience.  I can get just about any instrument in very very fine 
tuning within 2 hours... rarely need more then little over an hour.  In 
a difficult pitch raise situation... you can actually get the piano 
usable at pitch in an hour.... ready for those very fine adjustments you 
site below. If you have an hour for those... well the result should be 
more then adequate.

I also read with interest the report from Juilliard. We recently have 
run into that classic conflict of the desire to use our concert 
instruments for practice and other less critical usage and keeping them 
maintained. Things got way out of control these past couple months and 
suddenly our CF III and Steinway C got subjected to about 80 hours of 
hard banging with in a 45 day period.  One student alone had managed to 
book in 16 hours of rehearsals in one week. It was for her masters 
exam.  Our exams schedule is just after the major classical music 
festival here in town which I also have responsibility for. Our students 
have a concert series for that festival and the venue is just across the 
street from the school.  I found students using the CF III for warm-ups 
for their concerts at Grieghallen foaje. The interesting bit here is 
that the <<concert instrument>> is a C7 in an acoustically very 
difficult room. There was in other words no justification whatsoever for 
using the CF III for this.  If anything it would introduce a bit of a 
detriment to the actual performance.  The result of all this overuse was 
that there was 2 mm deep grooves that were 7 mm long on average for all 
hammers... a bit less in the lowest bass. This was on an instrument that 
had received a full service maintenance  session in March... so all that 
hammer wear came after then.

We are all having a meeting this coming week about the over use.  The 
basic rules we've always had is that students will get a maximum of 2 
hours to use the concert instrument in the week before any important 
exam. Otherwise the use of the instruments are reserved for concert and 
recordings, master classes and exams themselves.  Performers are allowed 
a 45 minute warm-up just prior to any concert time allowing.  Why things 
fell apart is what we will be meeting about.

In the real world... pianists rarely get to have this liberal a 
situation for concerts. Often enough, if not most often, they have 
perhaps 10 minutes to get to know the instrument... and then they have 
to play.  A school is necessarily a bit different with all the pressure 
exams bring to young anxious students... but still I think its an 
important part of their education to get used (at least this much) to 
reality.  Besides... the fact is... no piano will remain a concert 
instrument for long with the kind of use I mention above.

Cheers
RicB


    Hi again-

    Thanks for the comments.  That's certainly an impressive program at
    Juilliard....!  I think you emphasized the main issue at stake,
    which is
    defending the amount of time we require in the hall to maintain the
    standard that is expected there.  It's an uncomfortable argument to
    make
    when we know that the players are often not getting all the rehearsal
    time they desire either.  So it goes- but that aside, and back to the
    pianos,  what I was really thinking about in terms of more time on
    performance concert grands was not all the regulation and voicing, but
    rather the fact that I can tune a nice 6' grand with say a 4 cent pitch
    adjustment in 2 hours or less and confidently know that it is rock
    solid
    stable and beautifully tuned as good as possible.  I can not say the
    same for a concert grand. In fact about the only time I can know for
    sure that I'll feel that good about the tuning on a concert grand is if
    there is no adjustment at all.  It's this difference that I was hoping
    to quantify in more understandable or specific terms.   There is also
    the real issue on our own part of perhaps sometimes taking the whole
    experience too personally.  We want to keep the "magic" going.  It's so
    cool when that happens and is appreciated.  It's simply not possible
    for
    "magic" to happen all the time- same with performances, and
    musicians do
    understand that.

    cheers~

    dennis.
    St. Olaf College

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