thoughts on the Uchida concert, was "interesting ..."

[Charles Neuman]

I saw the Uchida concert at Carnegie Hall last night. I was sitting too
far up high to see if the piano was Hamburg or NY, so I don't have any
info there for you.

But I noticed some interesting things about the tuning.

She started with Schoenberg Op 11 (Three Pieces). Not being much of a
"harmonic" work, the piece didn't have any big chords. Often there were
some single octaves played in the treble or the bass. At first I thought
some unisons were out of tune or something, but I discovered that the
piano was stretched so that the single octaves were consistantly very
"active". I don't know if it was a normal amount of stretch or not, but I
don't think it worked well with this piece.

Now, when she played the Schumann Fantasy, things were different. There
were large chords played with both hands, spreading across several
octaves. In this case, the piano sounded brilliant. So, it seems the
stretch worked great for this piece. Since this piece took up the entire
second half of the program, it must have been the "big number", so I guess
it was appropriate to tune for this piece, if that's what was done.

In between the Schoenberg and the Schumann was a Schubert Sonata. In
places where there were large chords, the stretch sounded great. In places
where there were single octaves playing melodic passages in the upper
treble, I found the octaves to be a little too "active".

What was needed was two different pianos, stretched by different amounts.

During the intermission the tuner touched up the unisons. I wish he didn't
do that. I like pianos better after the unisions have smeared a little. I
find it annoying when I'm trying to play chords and I hear the beating so
clearly.

Charles Neuman
PTG Assoc, Long Island