Benjamin Sloane said: "The observations of Sturm, Mannino, and others about the peculiarities of different pianos, actions, and hammers bring us vis-à-vis the decision making process of belly and action work, and begs the question, "Is it still a Steinway? Is it still a Baldwin? Is it still a Mason & Hamlin? Is it still a Kawai?" My question is: Is it still a piano? Are we in the Steinway business? Are we in the Kawai business? Personally, I'm in the piano business. At our school we have many pianos. Some are Steinways, some Baldwins, some Yamahas - sadly, no Kawais but they're all pianos. I'm not paid by any of the piano factories but by the university. When I do restoration on a piano, I want it to be the best piano it can be. I'll use whatever parts I think are best for the instrument I'm working on and do the best work I am capable of. Teachers and students will use the brand name to identify an instrument as in "I'm playing in Caruth Auditorium tonight and I want to use the Yamaha." This is just to identify which is their choice for tonight's recital. "Is it still a Steinway?" is still a question I don't comprehend. Is it still a piano or have you made it into a harpsichord? Unless we are being subsidized by a particular factory, I don't think we have any obligation to do anything other than make the job we're doing at this moment the best job we can. The factory where this instrument started has nothing to do with replacing worn or broken parts. How did we get so hung up on this thing? dave David M. Porritt, RPT dporritt at smu.edu -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://ptg.org/pipermail/caut_ptg.org/attachments/20090417/2f7fb347/attachment.html>
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