David, at Stanford have you ever talked over these matters with Tom Rossing in CCRMA? It would be interesting to have a physicist/musician's take on piano sound. Laurence ----- Original Message ----- From: "David Love" <davidlovepianos at comcast.net> To: <caut at ptg.org> Sent: Thursday, March 03, 2011 11:49 AM Subject: Re: [CAUT] Fwd: Steinway sound-Hammer weights . . . Many of the professors whose pianos I keep at Stanford prefer the pianos brighter, but not all. Perhaps that's because they are going back and forth between their studios and the stage pianos more often. Outside of that setting, however, with most of the professional pianists that I work with I would say that I'm generally asked to bring things down far below the level of where you would expect a concert stage piano to be. I do find that serious piano students (on the other hand), especially those on the ascent, often prefer brighter. I don't want to delve into my own theory about what that psychology might be but I do see a trend coming out of one, in particular, well known East Coast music school that seems to value power and brashness over nuance and depth. Standards get set in all kinds of ways. David Love www.davidlovepianos.com
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