Tuning Stabilty Question

[Robert Finley]

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I would like to ask your opinion about piano tuning stability. Last =
weekend we finished our international piano competition in Boston. It =
began on Wednesday June 22nd. I was the director of the competition and =
had a lot of administrative work to do.

A couple of weekends before the competition I made several visits to the =
college and tuned four of the practice pianos, because last time in 2003 =
they were badly out of tune. They hadn't been tuned since January, the =
beginning of the semester, and I thought I would save our organization =
some money.=20

The pianos were very old (looked as if they were from the early 1900s), =
and consisted of two Steinway Bs, a Steinway A, and  a Baldwin Hamilton =
Studio console.  They didn't seem to have been looked after very well. =
There were paper clips, pins, dust and other debris inside. Some of the =
tuning pins were rather loose. The music stand on a Steinway B was =
broken and in terrible shape.=20

I used the SAT III to  to tune them. I applied strong blows to equalize =
the tension in the strings, and lighter listening blows to check the =
resultant tuning. When I finished each piano, there was a very big =
improvement, and I could have given a recital on each of them. The notes =
had a bell like clarity, although the tone of the Baldwin upright was =
rather mediocre.=20

During the competition, the practice pianos were in use from 8 am until =
11 pm each day by contestants. They practiced such things as the =
Prokofiev Toccata, Rachmaninoff Etudes, Liszt etc, and they began to go =
out of tune. The air conditioning in the building cycled on and off =
during the night and day. They were in quite out of tune by the end of =
the competition.=20

My question is, would you typically expect pianos to go out of tune =
under these circumstances or should they have held their tuning better? =
I know it is difficult to say without seeing the pianos, but I just =
wondered what your opinion might be.  I'm not sure what else I could =
have done to make the pianos hold their tuning longer. I couldn't go in =
to re-tune them because they were constantly in use by the contestants =
from morning to late at night. I was also overloaded with work, running =
the competition, so I wouldn't have had the time anyway.=20

Thanks for your thoughts and a happy July 4th.=20

Robert Finley
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