Any instrument, particularly a high quality one, will have characteristics which appeal on a personal level to the person who plays it. Violinists spend what seems like a lifetime searching for their perfect violin, spend inordinate amounts of money buying it when they find it, and then spend the rest of their performing lives learning how to play it. Virtuosos of most orchestral instruments (even harpists) get to carry their instrument around with them. It literally becomes part of their family.
Organists and pianists are not so lucky. Your average concert pianist plays as many different pianos as he/she plays concerts. Turn up to play, the piano is there. Play it, go away to the next one. No wonder many of them go mad …
Perhaps this is a major reason why conformity rules. People expect, performers deliver what is expected on pianos they know will respond in a time tested and consistent way. Perhaps this is also why concert audiences are dwindling and younger audiences are going elsewhere.
There is no progression, no variation, no challenge in the concert experience. Everything is cold, impersonal, black and numbing. Seen one concert, you’ve seen them all. Does it matter who is performing?
In a very interesting commentary, Terry Teachout
(http://www.commentarymagazine.com/viewarticle.cfm/Free-the-Piano-Player-11278) looks at this trend, and makes the very valid point that since Liszt pioneered the solo recital, over time the performer has been placed further and further ‘away’ from the audience. The audience comes in, the pianist comes in, the pianist plays, the pianist leaves, the audience leaves.
The story of David Helfgott is well known. Whilst the traditionalists sneer, his audiences lap it up. I think the reason for this is quite simple. By some means or other, Helfgott ‘connects’ with his audience and takes them along with him. It doesn’t matter if he’s not Horowitz or whoever. The overall concert experience is different and people come out of his concerts moved in such a way that even the best concert pianists cannot hope to emulate, given the gulf that is normally present between the performer and the audience.
So, today’s concert pianist has two hurdles to overcome: familiarity and atmosphere. We need to reinvent a few things.
1) To get way from the sameness and expectation for conformity that seems to be the norm these days – and that certainly was not the case in days gone by.
2) To allow the humanity and personality of the performer to become just as essential as ingredient as the printed music itself.
3) To encourage diversity in interpretation and create an awareness in the audience that this as much a learning experience for them as anything else.
The Stuart piano has, in my view, an important role to play in this – indeed I suspect that lurking in the back of my mind somewhere when I acquired this thing was an inkling that I really saw this as a way for me to express myself such as I am able to in precisely this fashion.
Horowitz I am not, of course. But if I can push things along a little bit in these directions I won’t be too displeased, no matter how many mistakes I may make along the way. But it takes time to learn how to play this instrument to its full potential. Expediency is a trap that must be avoided at all costs. Investments very rarely succeed in the short term.