Grand pianos in concert halls

[Frank Cox]

I was reading some comments on another website where professional musicians were saying that the quality of maintenance on the pianos in concert halls has declined.

Since covid, many of these pianos are not being maintained and regulated until they go noticeably out of tune. Major venues like Carnegie Hall haven't changed their procedures but concert halls and theatres in smaller cities have cut back on their piano servicing significantly and the performers are taking notice. If the performers complain they are told that's all the budget allows so deal with it.

One pianist said that he is cutting down on his touring and spending more time giving lessons and making youtube videos because he doesn't feel that the pianos he is being provided in these venues allow him to offer the performance that he is capable of and wishes to provide to the audiences. Several other commenters said they were considering the same thing.

[Randy Stankey]

We used to do a lot of work keeping pianos in tune and working when I was at Mercyhurst.

There were at least two tunings and PMs per year, need it or not. Plus, there would be a tuning before every major concert. Regular school recitals didn't always get a tuning unless the music prof. in charge of the recital asked for it. (and paid for it out of their budget.)

We had an enclosed "piano garage" where the pianos (Two Steinway Grands.) were kept when not being used. It wasn't necessarily temperature controlled but it was in a place where the temperature never went below 60º F. A piano would be brought out to the stage 24 hrs. before it was to be played in concert. If it was a run-of-the-mill event, a few hours might suffice.

I remember three concerts where the piano was completely tuned, regulated, voiced and checked over by a piano tech from Steinway: Xavier Hollander, Emanuel Ax and Vladmir Feltzman. Feltzman was known to be picky about his pianos. For him, we flew a guy in from Steinway, NYC because he was the only guy we could find who knew how Feltzman wanted his piano to feel. (The regular Steinway guy drove up from Pittsburgh and our regular, everyday tuner was local.)

Given the number of hoops I had to jump through in order to keep pianos working at Mercyhurst, I'm surprised that more venues don't take better care of their pianos! I don't take COVID as a valid excuse! A full sized Steinway can cost, easily, $100K or more! (I used to tell my stagehands that one of those pianos cost more than some peoples' houses! ) Properly kept, one can last decades without needing major work and some are in excess of 100 yrs. old and still kicking. It would be a crime to not keep a piano tuned and in working order!

Besides, every major concert I was in charge of had riders that specified whether a piano was to be used and the manner in which it was tuned. There was even one performer who specified fortepiano tuned for Baroque temperament! (She was a Mozart aficionado.) I had to go out and rent one to satisfy the rider.

If the performers complain they are told that's all the budget allows so deal with it.

If I had said that to one of my performers, they just would have said, "No show!"
Either you provide a working and tuned piano or the guy doesn't play.

AFIAC, there's no freakin' reason to host a concert using an untuned piano!

Shame on any even half-decent venue for not taking care of their pianos like they should!

If somebody is still using COVID as an excuse, they should be taken out and shot!

[Marcel Birgelen]

I don't know if COVID-19 is a valid excuse for everyting, but the current market situation certainly has a lot of its root in what has happened the last 3 or so years. There still is a shortage of everything and stuff that was bad before the pandemic generally only has worsened.

A now retired colleague of mine played the organ in some local churches in his spare time. The state of many of those highly complex and delicate musical instruments was already dire before the pandemic hit. Two-plus years without maintenance, no budget remaining to fix anything and the total lack of knowledgeable people in the market haven't really helped. He's now seemingly in the situation where he often needs to "play around" multiple malfunctioning registers, which makes his job increasingly hard... Sometimes, he's even playing songs in a different key, to avoid troubles, to the frustration of the choir, but there are seemingly no other options...

[Mike Blakesley]

I saw an article recently which said that the piano is a unique instrument because it's basically a string instrument and a percussion instrument in one. It has strings, but they are hit with hammers. I'd never thought of that before, but I can't think of anything else that works the same way.

No joke on the costs. Our church recently got a new piano that was donated by a member's estate. It's a baby grand and cost $17,000 (and it's gorgeous). Given the size, weight, complexity etc. of a concert grand, I can see why the big'uns are so expensive. So yeah, a thing that expensive should be kept up. Same as a digital projector, eh?

[Frank Cox]

I saw a comment once that said a piano is the only instrument where you can have a complete musical experience all by yourself.

Of course, one of the hazards of being a pianist is that people drop money in your drink.

[Jim Cassedy]

I've occasionally projected at a large multi-purpose performing arts center. In addition to having digital &
film projection capability, they have complete stage and orchestra facilities. I was once prepping & for a
film festival that was starting there in a couple of days, but that night there was some big-wig concert
pianist performing, and the piano tuners kicked everyone out of the building (including me) for over an
hour so they could work in absolute silence even though I was probably at least 150' for more from the
stage and two floors up in a fairly soundproof booth. But I was OK with that, since I really respect what
those guys do. It's an 'art' in itself. (and another reason I didn't mind much was that I got to goof off
all morning at full union pay, since I was scheduled to work and the venue had forgotten to tell me
about the piano guys- -so it wasn't my fault I couldn't do my job) .

Back in the 1980's, I was doing an out of town job a another large performing arts center in
Phoenix, AZ. For those of you outside the USA, the climate in Phoenix is almost always very hot
and very dry most for the year. Since that venue showcased a lot of big out of town musical acts
and musicians, the stage-crew showed me a large, carefully climate controlled room where visiting
musicians would store their instruments when they came to play in Phoenix, since the extremely
dry climate had an effect on the tuning of delicate string instruments like violins & harps, and it
even had some effect on reed instruments and drums. And yes, the venu's uber-expensive concert
grand piano had its' own separate storage room,

These rooms were kept at a very tightly regulated combination of temperate and relative humidity.
I also remember the head stage manager telling me that when some of the really big pop vocalists
or opera stars performed in Phoenix, they would sometimes arrive a day or two early so that their
vocal cords could get acclimated to the dry weather. I can attest to that! My folks moved to one
of the suburbs outside of Phoenix when they retired, and whenever I would go to visit them, it
would take a day or two for my throat & nasal cavities to get used to the extremely dry weather.
My voice would get hoarse and raspy, and I'd get a dry cough. (It probably didn't help matters
that my folks lived at the edge of an Arizona desert, whereas I live within sight of both the Pacific
Ocean, and San Francisco Bay - -so I was going from one humidity extreme to another)
i probably would have felt worse if I was piano. . . .

[Leo Enticknap]

A now retired colleague of mine played the organ in some local churches in his spare time. The state of many of those highly complex and delicate musical instruments was already dire before the pandemic hit. Two-plus years without maintenance, no budget remaining to fix anything and the total lack of knowledgeable people in the market haven't really helped. He's now seemingly in the situation where he often needs to "play around" multiple malfunctioning registers, which makes his job increasingly hard... Sometimes, he's even playing songs in a different key, to avoid troubles, to the frustration of the choir, but there are seemingly no other options...

As an amateur organist myself, I feel his pain. If it's not voiced regularly you rapidly get to a point at which some stops are not usable with others, due to natural changes in pitch. Defects in the pneumatic system can affect whole departments (e.g. the choir is slightly out relative to the great). I am not good enough to trust myself to be able to transpose even a relatively simple hymn on the fly, so then you go down the rabbit hole of avoiding certain stops in combination with others, adding more registration changes because coupling two departments can inadvertently add a bad stop, etc. etc. And maintaining even a small church organ (say, 15-20 speaking stops) is an order of magnitude more expensive than even a concert grand piano.

Still, as far as pianos go, letting them drift out as tune isn't as big a problem as this. My understanding is that the world's top virtuosos always ship their personal instruments around with them (Krystian Zimmermann once famously went on a massive online rant when his was denied entry by a bloody minded US customs official, who had convinced himself that there must be drugs concealed in it), and suspect that not feeling able to trust the quality of maintenance of one owned by a concert venue is part of the reason why.

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

Almost bought a Bosendorfer back in the 1980's that was at Universal Recording in Downtown Chicago they had closed and wanted everything gone. They were only asking 4k for it, but unfortunately, even if disassembled, the pieces were to large to go down the stairway. So the only way it could come out was through a back window and via a crane, which is how it went in originally. Plus with all the typical Silly Of Chicago red tape costs, and the crane, it was going to be over 20k to have it brought down. Far as I know it may still be sitting there today, but Universal Recording is long gone.

[Leo Enticknap]

Pianos are heavy buggers.

Annoyingly, none of the coverage of the Angela Hewitt incident that I saw provided any detail as to how it was dropped from a sufficient height to total it, but, IMHO, it must have been suspended from a winch at least a few feet off the ground before suddenly entering a free fall to have caused that much damage. This leads me to speculate that the people moving it simply underestimated its weight, and used winching equipment that couldn't hold something that heavy. Thank goodness no-one was underneath it at the time. I remember from the Barco training school for the DP4K-L series that the Powerpoint lecture included a photo of one on a pallet being craned in through the roof of a building, while someone was sitting directly underneath it (as a "how not to do it" joke).

Laurel and Hardy may not have realized it, but their compact upright was one of the easier ones!

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

Yes, the Bosendorfer couldn't fit down the stairs, and at over a half ton may have been too heavy for the old wood stairs that were in that building. My wonderful first wife had an upright piano and we needed to move it to the new house. Piano mover shows up and did the entire out and back in move by himself. Then tuned it at the new place.

[Mike Blakesley]

it must have been suspended from a winch at least a few feet off the ground before suddenly entering a free fall to have caused that much damage. ... Thank goodness no-one was underneath it at the time.

Actually I think "crushed by a falling piano" would be a pretty good way to go. At least it would be memorable for the survivors.

[Frank Cox]

Warner Bros would probably claim copyright on it, though. *beep beep*