[CAUT] Weikert felt; was 80 year old S&S hammers

[Ed Sutton]

Paul-

Have you heard Hailun or Ritmueller pianos?
Not at all Imadegawa-ish.

Ed
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: PAULREVENKOJONES at aol.com 
  To: caut at ptg.org 
  Sent: Wednesday, April 15, 2009 8:43 PM
  Subject: Re: [CAUT] Weikert felt; was 80 year old S&S hammers


  Fred:

  I think you're dab on. 

  I also think that the sociology of piano sound, that is, the "accepted" sound of a piano has changed so radically since the early years of the 20th century largely due to the influence of hammer types which have drifted toward harder, denser, more brilliant, and more piercing. The Oriental influence is most notable in this regard. What we find "acceptable" piano sound now is more Yamaha-ish, Imadegawa-ish, than M&H or Dolge hammers. 

  What composers heard as they composed would be, I think, largely unrecognizable as the pianos for which they wrote. As you say, this doesn't condemn the modern piano, or the modern sound, but it does make one think, and maybe wish for a bit more spectrum bandwidth. :-)

  Paul

  In a message dated 4/15/2009 7:25:13 P.M. Central Daylight Time, fssturm at unm.edu writes:
    I think there is a lot to learn  
    from the 19th century, which was, after all, the century of the piano  
    composer - most of the standard rep comes from that period. Brahms  
    played a Graf he got from Clara Schumann for much of his life, which  
    can give a sense of proportion. What I am thinking of is the whole  
    picture: amount of energy in versus sound out; ease of making various  
    voices in various registers stand out from one another; degree of  
    difference in timbre versus finger technique (how much "effort" to  
    make a difference). I think there is a whole world of sound and  
    expressiveness out there that earlier pianos had and modern ones  
    don't. This doesn't mean modern ones are bad, it just means that they  
    are limited to a particular spectrum of sound and performance, and the  
    loss is a real shame.



------------------------------------------------------------------------------
  Great deals on Dell’s most popular laptops – Starting at $479 
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://ptg.org/pipermail/caut_ptg.org/attachments/20090415/b043fc8b/attachment.html>