Thursday, September 11. 2008So where am I at now?
My left eye is not quite what it was, but I have a new glasses lens for it and whilst I don’t use it for reading (I use my right eye which is still perfectly OK) my distance vision is good. So which eye I use depends upon distance, and as a result I find that I need to use my right eye to play the piano. This is a trifle awkward since my brain stubbornly refuses to change its old ways and still tries to look at the left hand side of the keyboard through the left eye. This does not necessarily result in any degree of technical accuracy, as might be expected.
I must admit that I’m now quite sensitised as may be expected to potential visual acuity issues and when I woke up this morning I had flashes and floaters in my right eye – the one that was not operated on. Alarm bells with a vengeance. I was somewhat relieved when about half an hour later the flashes etc had disappeared but nonetheless I hightailed it to my surgeon who had a good look at the eye and informed me must to my relief that the eye was perfectly OK (as was the left still) and what I had experienced was a slight readjustment in the vitreous gel within the eye. Back to the piano… By and large I’m pleased with the way I’m adjusting and I will test this out in a short recital I will give for a friend of mine in two weeks time. The Chopin mazurkas opus 24 are on the menu, and also possibly a piece by William Baines (Drift Light from Pictures of light) depending upon timing and I may also play Alexander Siloti’s transcription of a Bach Prelude in B minor which is quite delightful. The problem of course is that I won’t be playing a Stuart piano but nonetheless I’m sure the piano will be up to my limited skills. It will be interesting to see (or hear, actually) how I play since I will not be able to use the touch or pedals etc that I am now quite familiar with on the Stuart. Don’t think I’m being snobbish here, but I have made the point in previous posts in this blog that I will not be able to play other pianos the same way as I play the Stuart (and vice versa of course). That is a fact of life and I have to guard against my expectations here and accept that I am playing on a different instrument. The Baines piece in particular comes out spectacularly well on the Stuart’s very clear and sustained bass, and I shall need to adjust my playing accordingly. The Chopin mazurkas require very careful touch in a number of places – I have been practicing without using the una corda to prepare myself for a piano without one (!) and I think I’ve got the tone reasonably right. So I hope things go off well. Once again it’s a step towards bringing my sense of self confidence back to a reasonable level. On another note I’m beginning to get the hang of European cut cor anglais reeds. I recently had my cor anglais serviced by one of (if not the) best technicians in the business and it is now so much easier to play its not funny. So if my eyesight eventually does turn pearshaped (and that is not beyond the realms of possibility given what has happened to me over the last few months) I have a possible musical alternative. You never know, I may have to rename this blog… But not yet. Monday, September 8. 2008Computers and their role...
I’ve mentioned before that over a (by now) rather long career I’ve been exposed to many computers of varying sizes, sophistication and speed.
I recall with fondness DEC PDP8 computers with paper tape loaders, front dip switches and the ubiquitous ASR-33 teletype. I’ve dropped boxes of punched cards (whilst not being drunk) and marveled at wall-to-wall flashing lights, whirring tape drives and devastatingly fast line printers. I was in the forefront of microcomputer networking and sat fascinated in front of an NEC APC computer with a colour screen with more power than an IBM 7040 of a previous generation. So what, you might say? Well last month, I acquired my latest computer. It plays games, has full web access, does my email, tells me where I am and can work out how to get home from where I am, gives me pictures of my house from on high (including those of our relatives in Los Angeles and Manila), and plays (extremely well I might add) my recordings of my piano as well as playing full movie videos if so required. Rather usefully, it has a very neat metronome application that looks and sounds just like the real thing and a superb Mandelbrot application which draws incredible designs on my screen. To top it all off, I can generate a rotatable 3D image of the copper-containing plant protein Plastocyanin derived from the leaves of some rather large poplar trees outside St Paul’s College at Sydney University during my time as a PhD student in the Crystal Structure Group in the School of Chemistry – complete with copper atom in green, the sulphur atoms of the cysteine and methionine in yellow, and the nitrogens of the two histidines in blue. Oh, coincidentally, this thing also makes mobile telephone calls through the 3G network, and sits very comfortably in the palm of my hand. It’s an iPhone. I must admit it is very impressive. Now I can carry around with me photographs, sounds and videos of the piano (and of course lots of other things as well) to the tune of 16 gigabytes. It just goes to show that the march of technology is getting faster and faster. This doesn’t have much to do about the Stuart piano other than as I said I have much better access to the sounds and looks of the piano, but it is indicative of the ability of people now to access copious quantities of information from wherever it is and wherever they are – instantaneously. So it is possible for me to look up the website and play the sound samples directly on the iPhone. I can access iTunes and download (if they are there) tracks from artists playing the Stuart piano – from anywhere as long as I have 3G access. The mind boggles as to the possibilities – it really does. I wonder if I’m getting too old for this stuff? Now which game do I want to play now… Friday, August 22. 2008Yes, I know....
…that I haven’t added to this blog for a while, but I haven’t been that active on the piano and have been waiting for the prognosis on my eye before I can decide on how I handle things in the future.
The good news is that the gas bubble in the eye has now gone and I’ve got a clean bill of health from my surgeon, who I now have to visit again in some three months time. The eye is not quite as good as it was (I expected that) and also I have fluid effects in the eye which means that I can’t use the eye for anything close up. So long distance I can use my left eye, and my brain has actually started to do that, but for short distances and reading I have to use my right eye. As far as the piano is concerned, I’m still finding that my left eye is interfering and quite often I have to close my left eye to ensure that I’m focusing properly. What this means in practice is that technically I have problems with wide leaps in both hands – so I have quite a bit of work to do to improve my accuracy in that regard. The other thing it means is that I have to memorise the music because switching from the printed page to the piano is now more awkward than it used to be. Given the fact that I’ve commented elsewhere in my blog that my memory is also not what it used to be this is not something that fills me with delight, but nonetheless it is what I must improve on. So it will be slow and steady progress over the next few months to reinvent once again the way I play the piano. I will be sticking to the programme I have set myself in terms of my recording priorities, but I am in all probability not going to be of the same technical standard as I was (not that that was brilliant in the first place) before my operation. My cor anglais and oboe playing is improving, although my breath control needs to be better. I’m slowly standardising on the longer scrape reeds rather than the European scrape – I just can’t handle those yet. I’ll never really be that good on these, but at least the sounds are beginning to be musical. I have been amusing myself (yes, I know this sounds elitist but there really is a funny side to anything if you look hard enough) by following some of the piano-centric fora on the net. I won’t mention which ones of course, but it does seem to me that many people (not all) use these things as an ego trip to try to demonstrate their own superiority over other contributors. Most of the time they get rightfully put in their place and their standard response is to make a brief irrelevant comment to try to shore up their position and then disappear for a while licking their wounds until they have the guts to try again. My own modest contributions to such fora are as factual as I can make them, but still I find that some will try to distort the facts for their own purpose. My purpose is to correct any misinformation about Stuart pianos, and fortunately things are quiet on that front so I haven’t contributed to anything for a while. I am quite relieved about that. Thursday, July 31. 2008The SIPC and the Stuart Piano
Whilst the Sydney International Piano Competition is close to completion and, no matter who wins it or how good they are, people will have varying opinions about the real value of such competitions to the competitors as distinct from the organisers and sponsors, there have come to my attention some questions as to why the Stuart piano, being of course Australian, is not an option for the use of the competitors.
It is of interest to the readers of this blog to contemplate the commercial and real imperatives that confront any piano maker who might decide: a) to offer a piano b) to be accepted, and c) to invest in the logistics and requirements of the organisers who run these so called piano competitions. Competitions need money to operate and it is not too surprising that piano makers are seen as a possible source of funds. They also need instruments for the incessant practice and, of course, for the performance stage but they really only want one! The right one that everyone believes is the best one or that everyone is used to playing; too many different pianos will only confuse the agenda. When the first Sydney International Piano Competition was held in 1977 there were six different piano makers represented and seven pianos (two Steinways) which caused logistical chaos on stage and also in the minds of the competitors. In all reality it was difficult to really assess the performances as the variables were enormous. Indeed, Kawai was not at the first competition as it was thought by the dealers (Elvy's) not to be of the necessary standard. Ever since then there has been a thinning on the ground of the number and the brands of instruments presenting. I can’t remember whether was the last competition or the one before it, but there was then only a choice of Yamaha or Steinway. The addition of a Kawai is more recent. Now for the back stage hurdles piano makers have to negotiate just to be considered to participate in the Sydney show. The organisers require not just the piano on stage, but a bevy of instruments small and large for practice purposes and also sponsorship contributions. All of this adds up to a significant financial commitment and, as most corporate expenditure must be justified, it is very difficult to find valid reasons why any maker would enter such an unpredictable and potentially damaging arena. For the ‘right’ maker winning or losing this war will have no material impact on their position in the piano hierarchy. As for the ladies left in waiting, it will be reduced to scrambling for the discount crumbs which are already being advertised as great deals, ex Sydney International Piano Competition pianos only played by competitors, pristine and virginal! Cheap! cheap! cheap! So much for a piano as investment, but of course the manufacturers may well get a taxation benefit from the write-down of such stock. Now I know for a fact that Stuart pianos are never discounted. A seven year old 2.9 metre grand was sent to England for evaluation purposes and ended up being sold for more than its original contract price, and no Stuart piano has yet been onsold for less than its original purchase price. Now that is an investment, I think most people would agree. But what if your brand of piano is not used by the competitors, or more people choose Brand X over Brand Y? Imagine a piano quietly and patiently waiting for a player who never came to tickle its fancy. Such manufacturers share this cruel and unfair damnation without recourse or justification. The pianos, like sitting ducks, await their fate. What a hideous scenario for an instrument maker. So, it really boils down to simple cash and deal that determines who supplies the pianos. Then there is the fear of the pianists, frightened out of their wits, who run the gauntlet along the line of least resistance from piano to performance in the vain hope of being recognised above the one that came before as the one that comes after is of no consequence! If there is a question why piano makers would present for selection in such circumstances, I cannot but wonder why companies like Steinway bother at all. It has won its place long ago and what possible advantage would there be for them to be exposed to the vagaries of a competition whose viewers and listeners seem hell-bent on the juvenile business of ranking everything from the castors to the nail polish?! Such exposition can only leave an honoured maker diminished in the same heinous ranking system which is naively portrayed with the proclamation of 9 to Steinway, 8 to Yamaha and 3 to Kawai. Save us from this tedious and potentially malicious boredom! Now in my view the answer to whether a Stuart piano should have been in the competition is, from a musical point of view, definitely yes but with the proviso that no other piano should have been allowed. That would have made the competition a genuinely Australian one instead of an imitation of countless other competitions, and provided a level playing field for all competitors to be judged. But, equally so, there is no doubt that the cost of such would have been enormous, I doubt that sufficient pianos would have been available and I’m sure that no discount deals would have been done to sell the pianos afterwards. So on balance I’m glad that Stuart pianos were not involved, and I don’t doubt that Wayne is as well. Sunday, July 20. 2008
The Sydney International Piano ... Posted by Dr Christopher Moore
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… is now in full swing. This is the ninth such competition, and I well remember the first in 1977 since my mother organised and I hosted a ‘rehearsal’ concert in Sydney for three of the Australian competitors.
I had a conversation with a musical friend of mine a day or so ago and he took pains to complain about the competition since he became so engrossed in listening to it that he wasn’t getting any other work done. His view was that the standard of the competition was very high, and that I can well believe. I was sitting in my car this afternoon waiting to pick up my son from his participation in the 500,000 or so strong Mass celebrated by the Pope at Randwick Racecourse. Whilst I was waiting I took the opportunity to tune in, as it were, to the live broadcast of the competition. I must admit my thoughts were somewhat mixed. I heard two pianists, both technically excellent as you would expect. The first, an American, played La Cathédrale Engloutie, to me a very dull and emotionally bereft performance which displayed none of the grandeur and power of the piece. He then played two mazurkas by Symanovski (a bit weird my taste but good nonetheless) and then Liszt’s Rhapsodie Espanole, for which he was in total command. The second pianist, from South Korea, played another Debussy Prelude, the Brahms A major Intermezzo and G minor Rhapsodie from Op118, and then finished off with Balakirev’s Islamey – an enormously difficult piece technically which seemed to lose its way a bit structurally towards the end – even though the notes were pretty much spot on. But what really concerned me was the sound of the piano. Both played a Yamaha (interestingly with a Steinway stool) rather than the available Steinway and Kawai (what happened to the Stuart I wonder?) but the sound to me was thin and very sharp – there didn’t appear to be much warmth, particularly with the Brahms Intermezzo, although the more bravura pieces came over much better. Not I may be biased and am certainly used to the sound of my Stuart (indeed I’ve told Wayne that the sound of my piano is at least as good as and in many cases better than the other Stuart pianos I’ve tried) but having played both La Cathédrale Engloutie and the Brahms Intermezzo on my piano the sound to me is much better and certainly more musically sensitive. Now I know that the broadcast sound may not be as good as the auditorium sound, but even taking that into account I really felt that the Yamaha as played by these pianists did not come up to scratch. It was certainly bright enough for the pyrotechnics, but the attack sounded very harsh and it seemed as though the sustain was very short. I’m certainly nowhere near these pianists in terms of technique, but there is no doubt in my mind that the Stuart piano in their hands (and allowing for their need to play the Stuart the way it should be played, as I’ve noted before) would produce much better results both tone wise and emotionally. Saturday, July 19. 2008Catching up...
I haven’t posted anything for a while, but that doesn’t mean that I’ve been idle. As I write this, we’re in the middle of World Youth Day and I’ve been helping my son in a number of musical activities that have gone off very well, and I’m very pleased (and proud, too, of course) about how his music has improved quite dramatically over the past couple of years.
A couple of nights ago he was part of the band (playing saxophone) for a function for Youth for Christ at St Francis of Assisi Catholic Church in Paddington here in Sydney. Now this is a lovely old church, great acoustics, and built in the traditional shape of the cross. As its name suggests, it is run by the Franciscan order and has one of the best, if not the best, classical church choirs in Sydney, rivaled only by that at St Mary’s Cathedral. So playing modern church music with electric guitars, bass, drums and saxophone (playing into our Rode shotgun microphone) and a packed audience of around two to three hundred youth all singing and having a great time was something of an experience for the priests – I’m not sure that anything like that has ever happened in that church before. I must admit it is not my ‘scene’ – but nonetheless you have to admire the commitment and the principles of all those involved – and I did enjoy the experience overall and David showed he could mix it musically with the best of them. My eye is now much better, and I only have a small residual gas bubble now which should disappear totally within the next few days. I saw my surgeon again yesterday and once again he is very pleased with the progress. It will still be a few weeks before we really know how good the eye will be, but even at this stage its looking good, if readers can excuse the pun. So my piano work continues apace and I’m close to the stage, despite the eye, where I can start recording again. Additionally, I have finally been able to get some time to start practicing the oboe and cor anglais again, and I must admit I’ve managed to get my embouchure much better this time around. So the sounds that are coming out are now much more musical and I’m beginning to think that I can start playing the oboe a bit when I help David in some of his mass singing. Monday, June 30. 2008A Summary So Far...
It is the end of the financial year and once again my family has to go through the tedious process of sorting out our income tax returns for the last year. It is also an opportunity for me to reflect on the past twelve months and assess where I am at musically and where I might go from here.
The major hiccup of course has been the last five weeks where I’ve basically been sedentary at home due to my eye operation. The good news is that I saw my surgeon last Friday and he was very pleased with the recovery. The gas bubble in my eye is going down and my left eye-sight is getting better all the time. So it pretty much looks as though I will have close to a text-book recovery, for which of course I am very grateful as can well be imagined. Apart from this, over the past six months I’ve had more time to spend musically and I think the work that I’ve put in has been reflected in the results and the overall improvement in my playing. I’m now, of course, fully acclimatised to the Stuart piano and it, in turn, is fully acclimatised to its environment. Whilst my technique is nowhere near what it should be I’m very pleased with the overall musicality than I can get out of the piano and whilst initially very nervous about giving a fully-fledged recital, even to friends and relatives, my recital at the end of May felt good to the fingers and was certainly received very well, even by people just as experienced as I am if not more so in the art of piano playing. At this current time the piano feels quite superb to the touch and my brain, fingers and feet appear to be combining better and better. As I’ve intimated several times in this blog, once you get used to this kind of piano it’s very difficult to go back. I’m not quite at the stage yet where I feel comfortable recording, even though I’m playing the pieces I intend to record reasonably well. I suspect this is just a confidence factor in me, and once my eye totally clears up in about three weeks that shouldn’t be a problem. My church organ activities will take a hiatus until December whilst the church is being totally refurbished but I’m back playing with my son most weekends whichever church his group is playing at at the time, and after an initial hiccup or two where my eyesight (or lack of it) played tricks on me it has worked out quite well. David is a fully mature musician these days, at home on a number of different instruments, and he has everything organised down to the last detail. I don’t think he gets that from me. So what do I want to achieve over the coming months? 1) Finish off two CDs – each of which has a different focus and aim 2) Continue an exploration of different kinds of music by mostly modern composers from different countries and styles. There is a huge amount of good stuff out there (and I’m picking more of it up each day) 3) Continue to try to develop my skills overall but especially in terms of understanding the Stuart piano and when best to apply its unique characteristics I plan to spend less time working (hopefully!) and more time being musically productive in as many ways as I can. I must admit I’m enjoying my music now much more than I’ve ever done, and for that I have to thank family, friends (and neighbours) for their support. Life goes on, as it should and must. Monday, June 23. 2008It's been a quiet week...
Except for my making more noise than is usual for me on the Stuart piano.
Overall my eye is much better and I’m now pretty confident that when the bubble finally goes my vision will be very close to what it was, which I must say is rather a relief. It still amazes me that such a complex and delicate operation can be performed so successfully. Apart from my enforced time at home, there have really been no side effects or post-operative issues whatsoever. I’ve been playing all sorts of music, including Gottschalk, Tan Dun, Granados, Chopin etc plus a whole swag of composers that I haven’t really had time in the past to investigate in any detail, for example the Mexican composer Manuel Ponce, whose 1st Intermezzo is a really gorgeous piece of music, and the Irish composer and scholar Howard Ferguson. What I’ve found is that my use of the piano’s sonority characteristics is getting better all of the time. As I’ve mentioned in previous postings, you can’t really play any kind of music on this piano in the same way as you would on a ‘traditional’ piano. I’m using less damper pedal (although I’m still using the two soft pedals quite extensively) and in many cases (although not all) I’m not playing these pieces as fast as perhaps I would have done in the past or else as I can remember from my student days. Some pieces I’m actually playing faster – the Granados Spanish Dance no 2 and the Ravel Pavane pour une Infante Defunte are two such pieces. Whilst obviously my technique (or, rather, lack of it) is a contributing factor here, nonetheless the amazing clarity of this piano allows for much more flexibility in the way these pieces come out – and this suits me down to the ground since by nature I am something of an ‘impulsive’ interpreter and will very rarely play a piece twice in the same way and almost invariably not according to the edition’s editorial idiosyncracies. I’m reinventing all the time and so far the results are pretty good. The journey continues. Monday, June 16. 2008
The best laid plans (encore) ... Posted by Dr Christopher Moore
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I saw my eye surgeon late last week and everything about my eye is looking good, pun intended. The gas bubble is going down very slowly, but I am getting much better vision in the eye and am getting more confident by the day that my vision will be OK. I’ve cut down on the antibiotics and I’ve also noticed that the pupil in the eye is beginning to return to normal. But it will still take another six weeks or so for the bubble to disappear and in the meantime I’m pretty much sedentary since of course I cannot drive until I’m medically cleared to so do.
So piano practice has recommenced and I’m adjusting much better to looking out of my right eye rather than my left. As well as various technical exercises (yawn…) I’m looking at music by Gottschalk, Granados, Tan Dun, Chopin and Schubert, not necessarily in that order. Once I get more confident I’ll resume the practice on my CD pieces and hopefully by the time my eye is OK (or even before if things go well in that regard) I’ll start some recording. I plan to resume my organist duties towards the end of the month, and I’m pleased that I was able to play keyboard for a couple of masses with my son over the weekend without any ill effects. In fact, it seems as though looking through my right eye and being able to see the right hand side of the keyboard better may well be an advantage. This begs the question as to whether I should have an operation to correct my strabismus, but my retinal surgeon was quite understandably very cautious about this, and I’ll certainly need his clearance before I even take the suggestion seriously. All in all, I am undoubtedly very fortunate indeed. Like most things of a serious medical nature, this is a definite wakeup call, and I need to take all the advantage I can whilst I still can. My fingers are feeling good, and the brain seems to be OK so lets get stuck into it… Monday, June 9. 2008The best laid plans (cont) …
My eyesight is getting better, slowly but surely. I’m back to a reasonable (i.e. not excessive) regimen of piano practice but what is apparent is that I won’t be back to any real performance standard for a while yet. Having to look out of my right eye means that I can see the right side of the keyboard much better than I used to but of course the corollary to that is that my left hand vision is not good and my left hand accuracy has diminished somewhat.
Nonetheless it is good to be able to sit down and play a bit – makes me feel much better overall. So what I’m starting to do is something that I should have been doing for a while now and that is to focus on my technique and in particular learn to play exercises with my eyes closed to get a better feel of the keyboard and to train my brain to ‘feel’ positions much better. I have a number of books of suitable stuff for this and hopefully over the next weeks when I have more time to spend on this there will be some positive results. Of course, there are other things to be done as well – I’m arranging a number of songs for my son to play on the saxophone and I really must sort out my digital score collection which is getting rather big and unwieldy. I also have to plan the next six months for my students and try to select music which will be beneficial to them both for their learning needs and enjoyment as well as challenging them musically and technically. Unfortunately, my recordings have had to be postponed but hopefully the work I do over the next few weeks will improve the final result. Thursday, June 5. 2008
What is more important to a composer? Posted by Dr Christopher Moore
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Making money, or having your music played? It’s a very serious questions, and of course the answer is not black or white, but somewhere in between.
In days gone by, if you wanted a piece of music, you went out to find it and then buy it. The retailer, publisher and composer all got their cut, as it were, and in many cases made quite a deal of money in doing so. But technology changes everything sooner or later and for the sheet music industry changes have created both opportunity and problems. Firstly, the ability to photocopy music and secondly the ability to download sheet music off the internet. After two of my students took performance exams last year I received a note from the AMEB advising me of copyright and that my students were using photocopies of sheet music. They obviously had no clue that the music I gave them was freely available on the Internet, and that the copyright for those editions expired many moons ago. I’m not that stupid, I don’t think. Not many people realise that much classical music printed before around 1930 is now out of copyright and therefore can be copied legally without restriction. Additionally, there are sites on the internet which allow downloads of first editions of the music of Beethoven and Chopin, and the complete works of Mozart (and I do mean complete) can be downloaded free of charge for personal use. In addition, copyright laws in many countries are either vague or non-existent and much music has been printed with little or no restrictions in that regard. There are multitudinous sites which offer vast collections of sheet music, either free or for a small charge, and of course there the ubiquitous file sharing networks to consider as well. What this has enabled me, in particular, to do is to become familiar with a large number of composers’ music which, until the advent of the internet, I’d never even heard of, let alone had a chance to play and explore. What the internet has done has made classical sheet music available to many more people and this has had a dual effect. Firstly, much music has been preserved which has little or no intrinsic commercial value either do to the obscurity of the composer concerned or else the edition is out of copyright. Secondly, it means that much of this music is now much better known and appreciated by a growing number of people simply because there was no other way of acquiring it up to this point in time. One would like to think that composers would like to make a lot of money from their sheet music, and that is not in dispute. But if that means that less people see that music – particularly over a period of the composer’s lifetime, is that really what the composer would want long term? At my recital much of the music I played came quite legitimately from out of copyright editions obtained, once again, quite legitimately. I was able to play much unusual music and this definitely added to the quality of the recital. There should always be a balance between cost and availability. The internet supplies the availability – we simply have to get the cost right. Wednesday, June 4. 2008The best laid plans …
Yesterday, June 3rd, would have been my father’s ninetieth birthday. An important milestone for the family, of course, but one which brought into sharp relief the fact that we are not here for eternity, but have a limited time in which to do the things we are able to on this earth. Not only that, but the tools which we have to do this with are not without their ups and downs, physical and mental.
Last week, a couple of days after my fundraising barbecue mentioned in the last posting, I suddenly lost focus in my left eye. Considering I have a strabismus, and my brain cuts out as it were the signals from my right eye (I normally only see out of my left eye and in fact I doubt that I’ve ever had binocular vision) this was obviously an extraordinarily serious turn of events. My ever reliable GP diagnosed what had happened very quickly, and sent me off to the Sydney Eye Hospital as a matter of urgency. I saw them on Wednesday afternoon, came back the next day to the Sydney Retina Centre and by lunchtime had had a significant retinal detachment in the eye repaired by the best surgeon in the business. I then had to spend 22 out of each 24 hour period for the next five days looking down since the detachment was at the bottom of the eye. I can assure you sleeping on my stomach with a special attachment designed to keep my head pointing down when I sleep is not something I found easy at all. My eye will not return to anything near normalcy for the next few weeks but it is improving and the portents are good at this stage that longer term my vision will be OK. At the moment, my brain has done the right thing and I’m now looking at the world through my right eye … a bit dizzying at the moment but it will get better. I’ve been very lucky. For a pianist, ears, eyes and fingers are the lifeblood of the experience. Without treatment I would have quickly lost vision from the eye and eventually the eye itself. It struck home just how fragile the human body can be, but also just how advanced medicine can be. The operation I had would have been much more complex even only a few years ago. Delicate it certainly was, but this operation now has a 98% success rate. How it will affect my piano playing I don’t know. This afternoon, I will try to find out. Monday, May 26. 2008I passed the test - I think ...
One of the reasons that I bought a Stuart piano in the first place was that, at least in the back of my mind, I needed to get what was left of my performing skills back to whatever level my mind and fingers would allow me to do. Whilst I haven’t really put as much effort into the technical side as I should have (I always was lazy in that respect, much to my teacher’s chagrin) I think that over the past couple of years my playing has become more assured and confident, at least when I was listening to the results.
But there’s nothing like performing in public, and I must admit the prospect of so doing made me somewhat nervous, the reason being that I haven’t given anything like a full solo piano recital for so many years that quite frankly I can’t remember when or where the last time was. That doesn’t mean I haven’t performed musically – I do a lot of church music, both as an organist and, with my family, on other instruments – but I haven’t exposed myself to the gaze of an audience who are specifically there to hear me play for many, many years. So it was with some trepidation that I finally summoned up the courage to arrange a function where I could do just that, and it was pleasing that I was able to achieve a number of different aims at the same time. Firstly, I was able to get a number of friends and family to attend a barbeque at my house. Rule #1 – provide good food and good wine. Secondly, the BBQ was a fundraising event to assist a friend of mine who is aiming to build a much needed children’s hospital in his home country of Sierra Leone, which has the highest infant and child mortality rate in Africa. Rule #2 – a (very) good cause. I was also very pleased and grateful that Wayne and Katie Stuart gave up their time to come down from Newcastle to meet everyone and talk about pianos and all sorts of other things. So I used the occasion to demonstrate in practice some of the features of the Stuart piano, and this became the test of my performing ability and where I currently stand in that regard. Rule #3 – add value to the occasion. Rule #1 – we had barbequed fish, octopus, prawns, steak, chicken and pork together with cauliflower cheese, roast vegetable salad, humungous prawn crackers, bread, cheese, Filipino ice cream + much more. A good selection of white and red Australian wines plus many bottles of cranberry and pink grapefruit juice and soft drinks for those with delicate stomachs rounded off the menu. Rule #2 – we raised over $1250 for the hospital. My thanks to all – great stuff. Rule #3 – Wayne spent most of his time talking about pianos – and everyone learnt quite a bit during that process, and I certainly think that between the two of us we got the main point across of the piano being deliberately designed to expand the capabilities of the ‘traditional’ piano for all kinds of music, but especially for the 21st century. And my performance? By and large I was happy with the way I played. I deliberately chose a varied programme which included Louis Couperin, Bach, Chopin, Debussy, Pärt, Vine and Gottschalk to firstly allow me to settle in to the performance properly and not be too ambitious first up, but also to provide sufficient variation to show what I could do and what the piano was capable of producing. I also had the advantage that I was close to the audience and was able to interact properly – and I always was good at communicating in that way without ever going close to GBH on the earhole. An interesting sidelight was that despite the piano being in a relatively small room (it does need to be bigger) and that I really let loose on a couple of pieces, no-one complained about the piano being too loud – and Wayne made sure beforehand that the piano was optimally voiced. That really puts the lie to views that this kind of piano (at least the 2.2 metre version) needs to be voiced down for home use. The piano’s exceptional clarity means that loudness does not equate to murkiness – the sound is much more pleasurable to the ear no matter what the volume. So now two things have come of the event. Firstly, everyone who was there wanted a repeat event in the future, so tentatively we are looking around the end of September for that to occur. Secondly, I have to raise the bar again with respect to my own playing. I suppose that this is a natural consequence of the process I established 30 months ago now. The momentum has been a bit slow coming – but that’s because I’ve had a long way to come to get to this stage. Now, I have to find more hours in the day – I’m not sure how to identify where I get the time from. Something’s got to give… There’s no turning back, now, I suspect. Friday, May 23. 2008It's not a Steinway ...
I know that, of course, but it seems as though many people don’t.
I’ve made the point many times that playing a Stuart piano requires a totally different mindset to that required for what I might call a ‘traditional’ piano. Most of the comment I see and hear still is very much hidebound by the traditions of the piano built up over the last 150 years and the sense of ‘comfort’ or ‘not wanting to change’ that this engenders. Janet Brewer, from the Queensland Conservatorium of Music at Griffith University, has submitted a thesis for the Master of Music, Performance Research degree entitled “It’s not a Steinway – Features and Perspectives of the Stuart and Sons Piano”. Her work uses a qualitative research methodology including surveys, interviews and subsequent discourse analysis to investigate the distinctive characteristics of the Stuart piano through the perspectives of experienced professional pianists who have performed both solo and chamber repertoire on Stuart pianos. Her overall conclusion is very much along the lines that I have espoused in this blog (and I wrote most of that before I had read her thesis) that playing the Stuart requires a different approach to clarity, touch and resonance and that the design stimulates the performer to draw on their experience and skill to provide something innovative in their interpretations. What the results point out is that there is considerable variation in performers’ views about how particular types of music can and should sound. There was general acceptance that the piano is easily adaptable to baroque, classical and post-19th century music, but opinions were divided as to romantic music as typified by Chopin, Brahms and (say) Rachmaninoff, where the sonority (i.e overall frequency mix) was seen by some (but by no means all) to be lacking. This type of music certainly relies very heavily on producing sound canvasses across the entire keyboard range and the combinations thereof are critically important to the human ear, but it seems to me as a (by now) experienced player of one of these pianos that the human ear is the problem. We are so used to the complexity (i.e. muddiness in many cases) of many pianos’ sounds that we have become desensitised to the qualities of the resonance itself. What the Stuart piano allows is a clearer definition to the listener of the composer’s structure and harmonies, and it is that clarity which I suspect people find difficult to adjust to. I play Chopin, Brahms and Rachmaninoff (as well as many others of that genre) and am finding that I’m appreciating the music much more because I can hear the harmonies much more clearly. In addition, that clarity is enabling me to expand using the extra notes to further explore the sounds that the composer may have had in his mind at the time he wrote the notes down. If it is felt that “the performance of the rich textures of Romantic music was deficient”, the cure for that deficiency lies in the fingers of the performer. The result will be different to the norm, but that is all to the good because this piano can redefine the norm if the brain controlling the fingers is good enough. The Stuart requires you to reinvent the way you play. The results of this thesis confirm that view. It also shows even so-called professional pianists quite often cannot get the old outdated ways out of their system. If you can do that, you’re on the way to a totally new and exciting experience that no other piano can match. Monday, May 19. 2008
Try before you buy … or not … the ... Posted by Dr Christopher Moore
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Comments (0) Trackback (1) Try before you buy … or not … the Great Internet Marketing Dilemma
When I was looking for a new piano 2½ years ago, I looked at and played as many new pianos as I could find to get a feel for what was out there. Eventually, as I outlined in the first post in this blog, I ended up in Newcastle, played a certain piano, and that was that. Quest over.
For many people, the principle of ‘try before you buy’ is a critical part of the purchasing process. In the piano world, that means the availability of showrooms with multitudinous pianos and sales people wearing ties and purporting to know exactly what you want or need and which piano in their showroom precisely fits that need and quite coincidentally blows your budget out of the water. But times are changing. The internet has spawned a large number of on-line stores which sell just about anything you want to buy from the smallest to the biggest. These ‘virtual’ stores only exist, as far as you’re concerned, on your computer screen. Their physical location is not necessarily that important. Their raison d’etre is price and convenience. Online ordering is cheaper to process, so they can offer much lower prices and much greater ranges than traditional retail stores, and then deliver to your home. Last year I bought a top of the range Patricola Oboe. I picked this one because I had seen very good reviews of it and the rosewood finish appealed to me much more than the traditional black. I bought it off a website in the USA, a significant reason being that it was much, much cheaper to so do than buying the instrument in Australia. Obviously, I didn’t have the opportunity to ‘try before you buy’. How does this relate to the piano industry in general and the Stuart piano in particular? Australia is, physically, a long way from anywhere else. Even parts of Australia are a long way from anywhere else. Stuart pianos, being what they are in terms of size, cost and manufacturing ethic, are not made in sufficient quantity to economically justify any form of ‘official’ dealership in any other place other than at the factory since this would add significantly to the cost without adding anything in terms of constructive value to the instrument. I have made the point in previous posts that when you buy a piano such as a Steinway, you are paying for considerable dealer and marketing costs – this is not a philosophy or practice which is desirable in my view for Stuart pianos. The advent of the internet has allowed the development of sophisticated web sites which fulfill much of the initial marketing requirements for many products, Stuart pianos included. So, firstly you can check out the website (impressive) and download the sound samples (even more impressive). However, having digested all the information there, how then do you get information you really need to close the deal? Do you need any more? Do you need to actually play the piano? I’m not so sure that you do. In the previous post I noted that “playing a piano such as this in a showroom, dealer or even at the factory is not necessarily going to show you in any significant way how your relationship with the piano is going to be consummated long term. The piano will adjust to its environment, and you will adjust to the piano.” So what and how you play now will not be what and how you play in the future. Another critical factor is how the piano is set up and maintained – bad voicing will result in bad voices, pianistically speaking. And as most people know, probably from hard experience, trying to predict the future is not exactly what you would call an exact science, nor in fact a science of any description. No matter how informed a decision is you can never be absolutely certain that any decision you make now is going to work in the future. No matter how reliable a product is by previous experience or reputation, how can you be sure that you’re going to get that reliability in practice? Of course, the answer is that you don’t. Essentially, you trust, or have faith in, the brand. What is becoming much clearer in the piano industry is that are far as the traditional ‘quality’ manufacturers are concerned, faith in the brand is rapidly being eroded due to competition from ‘cheaper’ makes and the consequent need to become more price competitive. This has, quite legitimately in my view, compromised their reputation for quality, and made it much more difficult for people to accept the brand name as a guarantee of the quality of days gone by. So buying a piano sight unseen is tantamount to a ‘leap of faith’ or ‘crossing the divide into the great unknown’ or a multitude of other statements which approach the class of cliché. You can never be sure as to what you are getting – and it’s not as though you can simply send it back to where you got it from and get another. But a case can be made that if you know what you are getting and can rely on it, then the chances of success improve dramatically. This is the internet marketing model. It doesn’t need a middleman, a physical store or anything that the pre-internet business regards as necessary. The process is essentially as follows: 1) I’m in the market for a new, high quality piano 2) I know about your product and its superb quality, tone and touch 3) I like the look and the sound of it as evidenced by your web site and am happy with the price 4) I know that if I order one from you it will be of that superb quality when I get it, so … 5) Send me one, please … do you accept VISA? There is no doubt about the quality of the Stuart piano. Mine still looks and plays better than when it just came out of the factory it has settled down beautifully. Unlike other manufacturers, this particular brand name is a guarantee of what you get. Their uncompromising attitude towards quality and pricing is an essential part of that. This of course comes with one giant, humungous caveat. It will only work for that quality of instrument for which the faith matches the result – mass produced instruments will not have the consistent level of quality to be able to take that risk, hence the need for showrooms and dealers. The other ingredient of course is the player. If you understand what the piano is about and want to be part of the experience of reinventing yourself as a musician, then there is no doubt, no leap of faith or whatever. The only risk is with you, not the piano. If you’re up for that, you won’t be disappointed. |
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