-------------- Original message ---------------------- From: pianotech-request at ptg.org >Monday March 19, 2007 Jurgen Goering wrote: >I once had the pleasure of experiencing Beethoven sonatas played on an >1830s Broadwood concert grand in a piano collector's home. This piano >was very similar to what Beethoven would have played and composed on >a decade or two earlier. The instrument had been in good condition >originally and had been refurbished. >In this case, I was thrilled it wasn't a modern concert grand I was >hearing. It was a "goosebumps" experience. >Jurgen Goering >Piano Forte Supply Jurgen, This past summer during the Steinway workshop at Oberlin College Eric Schandall arranged for one evening's entertaiment for all of us participants to visit the home of Prof. David Braitman - a concert painist who performs on both modern and historical pianos, and is a member of the Oberlin faculty. In his music room he has six instruments - replicas of a Stein and a Dulcken from the Mozart era (5 8vas), a late Beethoven Graf replica (6 1/2 8vas) a transitional iron-plate instrument - sort of from the Chopin era (I forget the make), a Brahms era piano (again I forget the make) and a modern Steinway. He performed period repertoire for us on the various pianos, and demonstrated some of issues with expressive devices - dynamics and such - that have bedeviled performers of older music on modern instruments, and how these are not issues on period instruments. He also demonstrated for us some of the "fudging" performers have to do on modern instruments in order to remain true to the composer's expressive markings. The one demonstration I remember was from the beginning of a Beethoven sonata, where he calls for a sforzando, followed by a "piano" passage. He demonstrated for us how a true sforzando on a modern piano will take way too long to decay to be followed by a "piano" passage in Beethovens tempo. He then showed some of the techniques that he uses on a modern piano to simulate a "sforzando" so that he can perform this passage. He then played the same passage on the Graf - and it worked perfectly, with a true sforzando. The sforzando decayed in time for the following "piano" passage. He demonstrated several other such issues with music of Mozart, Schmann and Schubert - and some of the "fudging" that has to be done to make it work on a modern piano - and how straightforward it is on period instruments. There are many issues with balance, voicing, dynamics where the modern piano simply does not do what the composer intended, and performers have to find "workarounds" to realize the music on our modern blunderbuss of a piano. No less a pianist than Horowitz understood this - and dealt with it in his master classes. It is probably a pretty arrogant and useless stament to say that Chopin or Beethoven or whoever were looking for the sound of the modern piano. You can't get inside a dead musician's head, and you don';t know their likes and dislikes. But we all like to think that what we like must be wonderful because we like it... But, anyone who knows anything about the lives of Chopin or Beethoven would tell you that: Chopin for the second half of his life would probably not have been able to play the modern piano at all - he was too sick with tuberculosis and could barely handle his own light-action Pleyels, played in salons. One does not prefer an instrument one cannot play... Beethoven, on the other hand, might or might not have loved the modern piano. But I will guarantee you that he would have demanded more of it that it could deliver - just like he did with every other instrumemnt he wrote for, including the human voice. So just because he pushed his pianos (each successive bigger an better model - this was the era of rapid development) does not mean that a modern Steinway would have satisfied him any more than the 6 1/2 octave Graf - he was a genius crank who always wanted more than anyone or anything could give... As far as other composers, they may or may not have preferred the modern piano. But I will guarantee you that had they been working with the modern piano - they would have written music more suitable for it that did not require all this complicated fudging - after all, they wrote for themselves to perform... Which presents us with an insoluble problem. Our ear demands the modern piano - and accepts the bowdlerized form in which older music is presented on it for the sake of its sonority. And yet, if you want to know what the composer had in mind when the music was written - a performance on an instrument with character similar to that of the composer (and not necessarily a deteriorated instrument that once belonged to the composer himself) will give you a much better idea... But most of us find that unsatisfying - having been exposed for most of our lives to steel-fingered Russian pianists and their ilk playing that repertoire on pianos built for 2000 seater halls in a manner pleasing to the modern sensibility - which is shaped by a much louder and noisier world than that known to the 19th century musician... I would like to be the fly on the wall 100 years from now, when vastly superior electronic musical technology will have taken over the concert stage, and the musically inclined electroinics whizzes who service those things will be arguing that had Aaron Copeland had the modern, sophisticated electronic instruments, he would have never bothered with the primitive acoustic orchstras of his day because his music sounds so much better on the electronics - and they are never out of tune... Israel Stein -------------- next part -------------- An embedded message was scrubbed... From: pianotech-request at ptg.org Subject: Pianotech Digest, Vol 1285, Issue 99 Date: Mon, 19 Mar 2007 07:16:56 +0000 Size: 53775 Url: https://www.moypiano.com/ptg/pianotech.php/attachments/20070319/91be3674/attachment-0001.mht
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