The general received wisdom is that if your grand piano stands on a hard floor, whether wood, tile, concrete, etc., the loudness of the instrument can be reduced by putting a thick rug under it. So I’ve had a thick pile synthetic rug under the Omega since it arrived in my home just over three years ago.
GigBook – Sheet Music Reader for the iPad
Psst! Do you have an iPad and always wished you could use it for storing your sheet music and maybe use it on the music desk in a pinch? Well wish no more because there is GigBook!
You can even use it with accessories such as wired and wireless (Bluetooth) page turners and iPad mounting solutions.
Arrau talking about playing wrong notes
Here is an interesting exchange between Arrau and Joseph Horowitz in the book Arrau on Music and Performance.
J H / Busoni and Carreño were the two pianists who influenced you most?
C A / Those two. Carreño more than d’Albert [one of Carreño's husbands], because he never practiced. He used to have a big technique. Then he started losing interest in piano playing in order to compose. And yet his performance of the Liszt sonata was still marvelous. Full of wrong notes, and missed passages. But the feeling was wonderful—coordinating the whole thing, with each idea coming out of the one before.
How Teresa Carreño gets practice time
One of the books that I dip into from time to time is Arrau on Music and Performance, written by Joseph Horowitz. Just today I picked up something that I missed when reading it the first time around, and that is Arrau’s reporting of a comment made by the great Venezuelan pianist Teresa Carreño. She had five children with three husbands and a common-law partner. Arrau met her after one of her concerts, and she said, “Oh, with all the children we have it’s so difficult to practice. I have a loaded gun on my piano. And I have threatened all my children—if they open the door, I shoot.”
Armless pianist wins China’s Got Talent 2010
Again from Iñaki Coello’s blog I found another interesting YouTube video. It is the performance in the final of China’s Got Talent 2010, by Liu Wei the armless pianist.
The Kennedy Center Honors Dave Brubeck
I listen to some jazz, and of course to Dave Brubeck. When visiting Iñaki Coello’s blog I came across this gem of a clip from YouTube, from the Kennedy Center Honors Gala in September 2009, where Mr Brubeck was one of the Honorees for that year. Mr Brubeck didn’t know that his four sons were going to play in the concert. So when they are introduced you can see the surprise on his face, on his lips (“Son-of-a-b*tch!” at 3:26), and in the pump of the right fist!
Iñaki’s blog
A few days ago Iñaki Coello from Valladolid, Spain, contacted me asking for permission to use some of the pictures that I took during my visit to the Sauter factory in March 2008, for an article about piano construction. Iñaki’s blog is here: http://coellopiano.blogia.com/. It is in Spanish though, but the online Spanish-to-English translators do a good enough job (Babelfish is the worst). I point out Iñaki’s blog because it is a good read, and he is a piano technician. He has apprenticed at August Förster, Steinway & Sons Hamburg, and Sauter. He has also spent time at Yamaha’s factories in Japan.
Iñaki said that he was recently at the Sauter factory in Spaichingen to take a look at two Omega’s that the Ponferrada Conservatory has bought (along with a Hamburg S&S D, and some 20 uprights and grands from Yamaha.
Improved Non-dominant-hand awareness
In early February I underwent minor surgery on my right hand to remove a ganglion cyst at the base of the index finger (palm side). The cyst was small, about 3mm in diameter. But it was located at a pressure point in the hand so I had difficulty grasping things. After the surgery (under local anesthetic) I had to keep the surgery site dry, and of course I also had to do many things with my left hand. I also couldn’t play the piano for a month.
Not concentrating on Beethoven anymore
I had previously decided to concentrate on the Beethoven sonatas that interested me the most. That resolve didn’t last very long. Progress was slow, mainly because of insufficient practice time and the need to improve inadequate technique to solve specific technical challenges posed by Beethoven.
So I added other pieces to my ‘work in progress’ list:
- Tchaikovsky - Chant d’automne (Octobre), from The Seasons, Op. 37a
- Schumann – Kinderszenen, Op. 15
- Chopin – Nocturne in E-flat major, Op. 9, No. 2
- Kreisler – Praeludium and Allegro (in the style of G. Pugnani) for violin and piano
In the meantime, the Omega is doing well. Ever since I started using Tunelab the piano is holding its tuning very well. The treble has blossomed too. It now has a beautiful ‘creamy’ yet bell-like tone. It could be because Tunelab helps me to tune the treble unisons much more accurately than I was previously able to. I’m really not sure but who cares!
TuneLab for iPhone
I bought the iPhone port of TuneLab a few days ago, and finally got around to using it to tune the Omega yesterday.
Up until now I had been using Verituner Pocket. It worked fine, with my main gripes being a somewhat clumsy user interface and the fact that my old Pocket PC device’s battery could no longer hold a charge and had to be connected to the mains all the time it was in use.
I am happy to report that TuneLab works better for me on two counts:
