[CAUT] Warning to you hosting the Van Cliburn gold medalist

Porritt, David dporritt at mail.smu.edu
Wed Mar 3 07:16:56 MST 2010


How can professionals be so ignorant of their chosen instrument?  Next time you take your car in to get the oil changed, ask them if they can add about 50 horsepower to it while you wait.

dp


David M. Porritt, RPT
dporritt at smu.edu<mailto:dporritt at smu.edu>

From: caut-bounces at ptg.org [mailto:caut-bounces at ptg.org] On Behalf Of Paul T Williams
Sent: Tuesday, March 02, 2010 9:26 PM
To: caut at ptg.org
Subject: Re: [CAUT] Warning to you hosting the Van Cliburn gold medalist

Funny thing was..he very seriously asked me at intermission, "could you please make it a bit brighter?"  I had to hold my howling laughter inside and said, "if you could please come back next Tuesday and play I can make it happen!"  :>)

From:

"David Love" <davidlovepianos at comcast.net>

To:

<caut at ptg.org>

Date:

03/02/2010 08:48 PM

Subject:

Re: [CAUT] Warning to you hosting the Van Cliburn gold medalist


________________________________



What’s the matter, you can’t tune a newly strung D in 20 minutes ☺.  Complain, complain.  Welcome to the club.  In those situations I always very politely go to the pianist (after they’ve played awhile and can tell if it needs tuning) and say something to the effect of “I need about x amount of time with the piano before the doors open at 7:00.  If you find that it’s fine the way it is then please practice as long as you like but if not then I’ll need to get on it by x:xx.  I’m sorry but I was expecting you a bit earlier.”

The thought that the piano will go untuned before the concert usually convinces them that if they don’t know the piece by now and extra 30 minutes of practicing probably won’t help.

David Love
www.davidlovepianos.com

________________________________

To: caut at ptg.org
From: pwilliams4 at unlnotes.unl.edu
Date: Tue, 2 Mar 2010 18:18:11 -0600
Subject: [CAUT] Warning to you hosting the Van Cliburn gold medalist

Hi all,

Tonight, the Van Cliburn gold medalist is playing.  He blew off the afternoon practice and showed up at 4:30 instead of 3:30 to warm up.  He is supposed to go until 6:30 with a half hour to tune before the doors open at 7pm.

I'm not a happy camper.  He gets what he gets!! a two hour program with many major pieces each half.  I will have the great opportunity to tune during the intermission. (a joke). This piano has just been freshly restrung and is not stable at all.

Why do so many great pianists have no @#$% clue about their instrument??  for any of you hosting Mr. Khang, please tell him something resembling a clue on piano prep time.  I was caught totally off guard on this one.

Can you tell I'm pissed off??

Paul
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