Antares in Bergen

[Richard Brekne]

Hi there guys and gals.

The rush this past month has settled down now and I get to re-join the
throng here for a while. I have had an unusual time of it with lots of
more then usual demanding work and tunings around western Norway, and we
here in Bergen have been preparing for a special little event that to my
knowledge has never happened here before.

I have always wanted to get a closer look at some real down to earth
voicing, by someone who has had lots of factory experience, and a good
deal of no-BS concert work and so I got the University to aggree with
bringing in Andre' from Amsterdam up for a weekend to show myself and 4
other western Norway techs what he can do. We bought a set of excellent
quality hammers and shanks from Renner... of Andre's personal choice and
preference, and our newest Norwegian RPT Nils Henrick Jansen and myself
did our best to install them. Nils taught me a method of hammer hanging
I had not experienced before, and I introduced him to basic Stanwood
principals of evening out and balancing the actions SW, FW and leverage.

Andre came then to Bergen friday afternoon and was given the task of
voicing this brand new set of hammers on a little used and quite nice 10
year old Steinway B from Hamburg. The action was pretty well regulated,
but not better then was necessary for the job at hand. Perfectly useable
as it was, but rough by any really fine regulation standards. In other
words, the perfect situation for this class of ours.

Students and teachers were involved and were invited to play the piano
before and after Andre's work. On Saturday and Sunday we five were
privileged enough to watch a real master at work, and he was absolutely
fabulous at explaining his personal voicing philosophy, his knowledge
and experiences from factory work at S&S Hamburg, Yamaha Japan,
Bosendorfer, and Bechstein, and keeping us entertained at the same time
with plenty of humor and kidding around. And the result was just great.
We all got to watch this master job at work from the first stitch to the
final product in an intensive experience that we will all benefit from
in our further work.

Thanks Andre, and the other western Norway techs involved for a
fantastic seminar experience. Lets hope this is the first of many such
events to come in the future.

--
Richard Brekne
RPT, N.P.T.F.
Bergen, Norway
mailto:rbrekne@broadpark.no
http://home.broadpark.no/~rbrekne/ricmain.html