…at least not the hardcopy variety since I find that the internet provides me with quite sufficient bad news these days, but this article in the Australian in September caught my eye.
Objects of desire : Plastic banknotes, a funky shoe ... Vogue Living editor David Clark nominates 20 triumphs of Australian design from the past 20 years.
… of which number nine is the Stuart piano, and I quote:
“There are only 50 in the world, they take a year to make, and cost up to $200,000 each. They’re made in a small workshop in a converted church in the centre of Newcastle, but the beautifully crafted Stuart piano has reinvented piano technology. Wayne Stuart felt intuitively that piano design, which hadn’t changed since the 19th century, could be improved. His innovation was to alter the way the strings attach to the soundboard. Traditional pianos clamp the string to the soundboard horizontally, causing the sound to disharmonise and decay. Stuart’s invention keeps the string clamped vertically; that is, in the same plane as it is struck. The result is a constant vibration that produces a more dynamic range, longer sustain and greater clarity. He also added more keys and an extra pedal. Stuart’s new sound aesthetic has technicians and artists around the world in raptures.”
I’m not so sure about the converted church bit, although I quite understand that music is a religion to many people. The agraffe of course is not the only technical innovation that Wayne has introduced – there are many, but it certainly seems as though it is the critical advance around which all of the others are built, resulting in the piano as I know it today.
It’s particularly interesting that it is an editor of Vogue who made the choice – I’ve always felt that a piano has to be the ‘complete’ package as it were, both acoustically and visually and there’s no doubt that the piano looks as plays like a million dollars (current exchange rates notwithstanding).
Despite this, there still seems to be a considerable dead weight or inertia towards any ‘advances’ in pianoforte technology that upset the staid old status quo of 100 year old music being played on 100 year old (design-wise) pianos. I am slowly and carefully coming back to playing the piano again after my last operation and for some reason what I’m hearing is different to what I was hearing before the operation – there is a sensitivity in the sound and a certain control in the fingers that I haven’t experienced before. This applies not only to ‘modern’ classical music but also to the classical and romantic repertoire that I’ve been working on for a while now. I don’t know the reason for this – it just seems that my feedback channel between the ears and fingers is working somewhat better than before.
Of course I have no way of knowing objectively if this is the case – the feeling is totally subjective but I do know that when I’m feeling comfortable at the piano (and I do now) then something is going right. The piano is still in very good tune after six months of abuse, the action is fine and the touch on the keys feels both sensitive and sure at the same time. I’m also totally used to the pedals of course, and I’m finding that I don’t need to think about my use of the
dolce and
una corda pedals nearly so much as I used to.
So I’m now in a position to start on the recordings. Should be difficult, frustrating, annoying and fun.
After all, that’s one of reasons I got the piano in the first place.