Concern for concert pianos and for workloads is very understandable, but perhaps college and university technicians might also consider the value to students of a couple of hours of practice time on the special instrument they might otherwise be playing for the first time in what for them might be a milestone performance. In my limited experience, playing an unfamiliar instrument in an unfamiliar acoustic sometimes makes me rethink tempo, articulation, dynamics, balance, so I suppose it could also take a student more than one hour of practice time to adjust to the situation. Obviously unessential use of concert pianos has to be restricted, but surely college techs can try to cut the kids some slack so they can appear at their best in recital. Laurence Libin
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