At the risk of being annoyingly repetitive, trying to play a Stuart piano like a ‘normal’ piano is commensurate with sticking to first gear in a Ferrari – the player is just not ‘getting’ what these pianos are all about.
There is no ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ way to play any music. For most people, there is a ‘square’ within which a style of music and interpretation meets their standards or expectations – outside this square is outside their comfort zone and they reject this as ‘wrong’. I’ve always believed that Horowitz, for all his brilliance, stayed within the square. Glenn Gould, for example, deliberately stayed outside it. Horowitz in all likelihood would not have liked playing a Stuart piano. Gould would have loved it.
Pianos are normally built to comply with most people’s comfort zones, i.e. when you switch from one piano to another you should, by rights, be able to play your music in the way that you are accustomed to play. The Stuart piano does not fit this mold. It was deliberately designed to expand and redefine the square and performers, as I explained in my last post, have to understand that and be prepared to adapt to it. In ‘The Merchant of Venice’, Shakespeare writes
“whoever chooses me must give and hazard all he hath”. This applies equally to the Stuart piano as it did to Portia.
Performers have to listen much more closely to the sound they are producing, both in terms of what they hear at the keyboard and also what the audience hears in terms of the room ambience and acoustic properties. You need to link your fingers much more closely to the sound and resonance of the piano and ‘feel’ your way around the piece in ways that you haven’t done before. The result is unique to the Stuart, both in terms of the interpretation and the sound that you hear. The piano will bring out music in you that you didn’t know existed.
This is the first step in fully understanding the piano. Even without the use of the extra pedals, the clarity of tone and dynamic range of the piano still exceeds any other. You have to learn to master these and apply them to whatever music you are playing. My advice always is to adjust to the piano – you will always play and interpret totally differently on this piano. If you revert to another piano, so will your playing and interpretation revert, since you will never be able to do the same thing on a piano which is not a Stuart. Everybody I have spoken to who has embraced the piano in the way in which it was intended has said exactly the same thing.
If you’re not prepared for this, or if you don’t want to adapt and progress, don’t play it. This is a piano for the 21st century, not the 19th. Buy another piano and stay within the square. With a Stuart piano, you have a unique opportunity to define your own square. That is the challenge that awaits you.
Nietzche would have approved …