Wednesday, January 28. 2009
Reflections on a 'misspent' youth Posted by Dr Christopher Moore
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19:47
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Well, not exactly misspent. I managed four piano diplomas plus a honours degree in chemistry before I was 21, and my PhD followed from that. But whilst I enjoyed some success musically at that stage and gave a number of reasonably successful recitals, it is interesting that after all this time I can’t really remember how I played – although I must have played well enough to get through the diplomas I suppose.
I was reminded of this over the last few weeks when I’ve been working on the pieces for either recording or else for my next fundraising recital which I hope to put on in a couple of month’s time. To put it bluntly, I’m sloppy… Which of course takes me take to something that I wrote quite early on in this blog which has turned out to be totally true, as I no doubt expected at the time – “This piano is of such a high quality and is so responsive and reactive to the fingers that it accentuates everything that I do wrong.” And it does with a vengeance. I’m finding that whilst I could afford what might be called a certain laxity in execution when I was young, I certainly can’t do that now – it would just sound horrible. So I really need to focus on getting the notes right as much as possible, and that is a problem given my eyesight such as it is because my ability to move around the keyboard is somewhat limited now. However, there is no doubt that I am improving in that regard, and last week my eye got another YACBOH (check previous posts for the definition of this mysterious term) and my vision of the keyboard is getting better. As well as this my memory is beginning to function again and I’m beginning to find my feel for the music is improving all the time and the sounds that I am producing are quite musical – at least compared to what I was producing before. Wayne is coming down to tune and voice the piano early next week and if our ears are in any reasonable shape after listening to every note on the piano hammered into submission ad nauseum as is quite often the case, we may be able to get some test recording done. The repertoire is beginning to take shape – at last count I had well over fifty pieces that were good enough for me to consider either recording or performing – and my aim is to have at least one CD recorded by the end of March. I’m hoping that is not too ambitious, but we shall see. Thursday, January 15. 2009Sonorities
I’ve mentioned before that one of the main tasks for someone who wants to get the best out of a Stuart piano (or any other piano for that matter, but I’m focusing on the Stuart here) has to learn how to listen to what he or she is playing as distinct from merely hearing what is played. One needs to analyse the sound that is coming back – the harmonies, the sustains, the tone, the volume – all of these together go to make up the whole of the musical experience.
When one does this, it is not unusual to find that the music which is coming out is totally different to anything that you’ve played before – as I’ve said many times, on this piano you really do need to reinvent the way you play. I’ve been tinkering over the last few days with some transcriptions of J.S.Bach chorales by composers/pianists such as Margaret Sutherland, Edward Krish and Alexander Siloti, who as well as his well-known Prelude in B Minor also did a very effective transcription of the Air from the Orchestral Suite No 2. All are, not unexpectedly, slow and sonorous pieces, but what has surprised me is the effectiveness of the Stuart piano in being able to bring out not only the sonorities but also the harmonies, the counterpoint, the depth of the keyboard from the bass through to the treble and the marvelous way in which Bach uses the bass as a sustained counterpoint to what else is going on. Add into that the marvellous clarity of even the lowest bass notes, the dynamic range and tonal variation the piano allows you and you end up with a sound that is very organ-like in terms of its grandeur, power and tonal variation. I realise that Wayne designed these pianos in the first place to take advantage of and to provide a voice for 20th and 21st century music, but let’s not lose sight of the fact that this piano also allows for effective and dynamic interpretations of much more music than that. Bach’s music is so versatile in that respect – from the original Moog recordings of Walter Carlos to explorations of fugues by traditional Japanese instruments there is much to be gleaned. I’ve added a few more pieces to my recording wish list. Wednesday, January 14. 2009Tunings and other matters
I received the latest update to my Cleartune application on the iPhone yesterday, and this version has a number of improvements to its accuracy, and importantly now allows custom tunings to be added.
So I added two: Young 1799, and the J.S.Bach tuning which, it is believed, he used for the Well-Tempered Clavier. Having measured the tuning on the Stuart relative to these tunings there is obviously a difference particularly with the larger offsets but I will need to start tuning my other ‘little’ piano with one of these tunings (probably the Young 1799 as before) to see whether it is practical to be able to tune a piano to these tunings using the iPhone. I may also have to add in some sort of octave stretching but it should be instructive even though I may end up with a totally out of tune piano. However, I will leave the Stuart at equal temperament. Given the fact that I am playing much more modern music which was written with equal temperament in mind, my experiments with well-temperament on a Stuart piano will have to wait until I get my second one. The only problem with that is that I don’t know where I’m going to put it … A pity really. Tuesday, January 13. 2009
I’m beginning to get somewhere … Posted by Dr Christopher Moore
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13:08
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So far it has been a quiet beginning to what is hopefully going to be a better year for me both health-wise and music-wise. My last checkup with my trusty GP revealed no health problems requiring immediate attention, and my cholesterol level is sufficiently low for me to be able to enjoy the occasional fried chip once again.
On the music front things have been fairly quiet but I have noticed some positive signs that auger well in terms of my reclaiming some lost skills from last year. The main one is my eyesight. I am adjusting well to looking out of my right eye and I’m finding that the left eye is not interfering nearly so much as it used to – the brain is finally getting the message that things have changed with regard to my visual acuity and I’m finding my way around the keyboard with more confidence than I have had for a while now. A second one is my memory. For some unimagined reason I’m beginning to memorise music much more easily that I did previously. I’m commented about this in this blog before but I really don’t know the reason. However, the overall result of these is that at least to my eyes I’m playing much better than I did even late last year, and I think I may have some idea about why that may be. I’ve always thought that playing the piano was a complete loop of skills and activities which produced an overall result called ‘music’, or at least a reasonable facsimile thereof. Ears -> Brain -> Fingers -> Piano -> Ears Once this loop is working effectively the production of music becomes automatic in the sense that everything flows and is totally integrated. My problem has been that the link between the brain and fingers (my eyesight) has been disrupted and this has thrown off the entire system – I really struggled at times to make sense of what I was doing. But now things are getting better and I’m beginning to ‘feel’ the music again in a way that at least to my ears is getting back to what I know I can do. Add on to this the capabilities of the Stuart piano and I’m getting to the stage where I’m controlling the piano in the way I want to. That’s not to say that my technique is brilliant – far from it and that will never change, and also my vision will not allow me to make large jumps up and down the piano with any degree of certainty, at least not yet. However, it is the ‘feel’ that I’m after and my use and control of the sonorities of the piano is getting to the stage where a number of pieces are good enough for me to think about recording. I will test this out over the coming weeks, but I will not make any definitive recordings until the piano is tuned again towards the end of this month. The piano is still in remarkably good tune considering, but I know how much of a perfectionist Wayne is in this regard and given that I want to focus on the vertical nature of the sound as much as anything else, we’ll need to get things pretty much right, especially in the upper registers. All in all, a good start. Let’s hope it keeps going. Monday, January 5. 2009
FUD – and I don’t mean the Elmer ... Posted by Dr Christopher Moore
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17:45
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One of the good things about the internet is the ability to communicate and to transfer information. The use of fora and blogs is mute testimony to this. The problem is, however, quality rather than quantity of information. Most fora I scan have a depressingly low signal-to-noise ratio (or maybe I should call it quality-to-FUD ratio) and the really good quality and useful information tends to get lost in a sea of something dark, murky and somewhat smelly.
Take this quite reasonable question from one such source: “Why is it that the overall piano industry seems to move forward with innovation at a seemingly glacial snail’s pace?” (I’ve ‘corrected’ the grammar and spelling to protect the innocent, and I’m also bemused by the concept of a glacial snail – it must be well insulated). The first response (of which I’m quoting part) was full of misinformation and displayed an alarming lack of knowledge on the part of the poster: “Acoustic pianos are a 19th century/early 20th century product. The bulk of music written for the piano was written during that time. Pianos were fully developed instruments by the beginning of the 20th century. Everything that has happened since then has been a refinement, rather than a major change.” Not only that, but others who should have known better but were obviously keen to make their mark agreed with this. “I think XXXXX's answer to this summed it up perfectly.” “As usual, XXXXX, you nailed it.” “Right On, XXXXX!! “XXXXX surely hit the nail on the head.” Did he now? Let’s just say that if he were a carpenter there’s no way I’d let him anywhere near my house. His argument is very easily debunked. There has been a huge amount of piano music written after the 19th/early 20th century. The real issue is that up to this point in time the piano hasn't really changed since that time despite the massive changes in style and sonority of the music written to this date. Innovation does exist - and the Stuart & Sons piano is a perfect example of what innovation can achieve in an industry where I do agree real innovation has been lacking for well over a century. It is ridiculous that 21st century piano music is being written for a piano designed in the 19th century. Innovation in this case does not mean materials such as carbon fiber or teflon but a complete reappraisal of all aspects of piano design. Stuart pianos are totally conventional in terms of materials used. One of the attractions of the Stuart piano is just that – compared to all other ‘Steinway-based’ pianos in the market place it is a fully innovative piano where a number of significant advances and changes in design come together to produce a piano that is totally different to any other and is the only piano I have played which is, in the hands of a skilled musician, fully adaptable to any kind of music. Its just a pity that many people seem to so tied up with the 19th century ethos of most pianos that they are unable to see further than the end of their ears. Not a pretty sight… Thursday, January 1. 2009
Another year passed, and another ... Posted by Dr Christopher Moore
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18:23
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… and I suspect that I’m not going to able to predict anything about this year given that there is no way I could have predicted what happened to me last year.
But last year is last year and I really must focus on what I may be able to do this year on a musical level, and that means what am I going to achieve with the piano. I suspect the best I can do at this stage is to proceed with the CD recording I’ve been planning for a while but have not been able to proceed with for a variety of reasons mainly connected with my eyesight problems. There is always a concern in the back of my mind that I will still have problems further down the track but on the other hand my eye has been stable for a while and given that that is the minimum I can hope for there is now no reason that I can’t progress. Having observed some tricks of the recording trade at Tonya’s concert late last year there is a bit of experimenting to be done but within a very short time that can be finalised. My main fear is myself – that I haven’t regained the skills I had before my operations, but having played informally for a number of friends over the last few days (on other pianos, not the Stuart) I have been pleasurably surprised by some of the music that’s coming out. Maybe I’m not as bad as I think I am. Today was spent preparing for and then having the family down for a New Year’s Lunch. Everything went off well and it is very pleasing to know that the family (on both sides) is strong and very much together. I suspect this is something that not too many people can say for themselves and it is something that I value very highly, particularly as I grow older. The one thing I can be certain about is that music will remain an integral part of me for the foreseeable and non-foreseeable future, and that the Stuart piano, and the network of people this has brought me into contact with, will be an increasingly important factor in what I do. When I started this blog, I mentioned a number of ‘first impressions’ which I believed were very important in understanding what this piano ‘means’. I’ve no doubt that these remain – and my experiences with people who know Stuart pianos show that these principles are not just valid for me but appear to be more common than I first expected. Hopefully the recordings I do this year will assist others to understand what I mean. |
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