This is from a Steinway commercial that I got from them. I signed onto to their website a while back just for the hell of it and now the're desperately trying to sell me a piano. This is a wonderful performance and the piano sounds pretty good too - it should for ~$200,000!
That is an easy piece. Kids play that at recitals all the time. It sounds impressive to parents that their kid can play Beethoven. Luckily, I like the piece.
Cheaper well tuned pianos sound just as good.
Posts: 17614 | Location: Stuck at home | Registered: January 02, 2015
There really is no easy music. If it's a fast 'hard' piece that's all over the keyboard, you can miss notes or hit wrong notes all over the place and few will notice.
Even the slightest fuckup in a piece like this and the guy whose wife made him come will wake up and carry that memory home with him. (Don't ask me how I know this. )
This was a damned near perfect performance on the Rolls-Royce of instruments.
When a thing is funny, search it carefully for a hidden truth. - George Bernard Shaw
Posts: 15529 | Location: Virginia | Registered: July 03, 2007
If cheaper ones had that sound quality and consistency in their actions, then folks could save a whole lot of $$$. Almost all of the time when I see a first-rate pianist giving a first-rate performance, I also see a "Steinway & Sons" above the keyboard.
Here's Valentina Litsitsa doing another easy piece. (Imagine how it would sound if she hit a wrong note.)
Originally posted by Jim Shugart: There really is no easy music. If it's a fast 'hard' piece that's all over the keyboard, you can miss notes or hit wrong notes all over the place and few will notice.
True. Someone once asked a famous violinist (I forget which one) what the hardest piece was, and he replied Beethoven's Violin Concerto in D, because the melody was so simple and you're out there bare and alone with the orchestra following your riffs.
My sister just paid someone to junk a piano. Except for a few high-end models, nobody wants them anymore. Seems like a shame but electronics has taken over.
Posts: 6634 | Location: New England | Registered: January 06, 2003
The problem is that pianos age more like milk than wine. The internal parts are under an incredible amount of stress from the tension of the strings and they eventually succumb to it - especially the pinblocks. A pinblock is usually a piece of maple that holds the tuning pins and keeps them from slipping. If the pinblock develops cracks or otherwise fails, then the piano won't hold it's tune. Tuning a piano requires quite a bit of expertise and isn't cheap.* Restoration of an old piano can easily cost more than a new piano. Certainly, if Beethoven or George Gershwin used it... otherwise call the junk removers.
*I tried to tune my piano once and finally gave up and called a real tuner. He said, "You tried to do this yourself, didn't you?" {Snicker, chortle, snort, fart, giggle} He was a very irritating motherfucker.
When a thing is funny, search it carefully for a hidden truth. - George Bernard Shaw
Posts: 15529 | Location: Virginia | Registered: July 03, 2007
We owned, for a few years, a Mason and Hamlin Model BB, a 7 foot grand, made in 1993, after the company started building really high quality pianos again. We spent a lot of time listening to various pianos, and we loved the sound of the M&H better than any other. If I myself played I would have insisted we keep it, but we couldn’t really rationalize it when we moved to another place of work and rented our house. What a gorgeous sound—I’d love to have that in my life again. But the two kids who play (quite well, the older one won a regional piano competition in high school) aren’t in the house any more.
_________________________ “ What all the wise men promised has not happened, and what all the damned fools said would happen has come to pass.”— Lord Melbourne
Posts: 18506 | Location: One hop from Paradise | Registered: July 27, 2004
Originally posted by Jim Shugart: Pianos don't suck.
Alla salute, Cristofori....
"And gentlemen in England now abed, shall think themselves accursed they were not here, and hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks that fought with us upon Saint Crispin's Day"
Posts: 2746 | Location: The Shire | Registered: October 22, 2011
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