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Ricardo Muti Plays Piano

  • 1.  Ricardo Muti Plays Piano

    Posted 12-29-2020 16:43
    What does he hear?


    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xLiutQDH09Y


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    Ed Sutton
    ed440@me.com
    (980) 254-7413
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  • 2.  RE: Ricardo Muti Plays Piano

    Registered Piano Technician
    Posted 12-29-2020 17:51
    Get a tuner in there! 😢  Ouch!

    Pwg

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    Peter Grey
    Stratham NH
    603-686-2395
    pianodoctor57@gmail.com
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  • 3.  RE: Ricardo Muti Plays Piano

    Registered Piano Technician
    Posted 12-29-2020 19:44

    Just a built in vibrato ...






  • 4.  RE: Ricardo Muti Plays Piano

    Posted 12-29-2020 22:12
    Classic...excellent musicians, with outstanding ears...they have learned not to listen to their horrible sounding pianos. They create the sound they want to hear in their brains, and the actual real sound becomes superfluous, at least for them.  I remember doing this with the horrible pianos I played and owned before becoming a tech.  I would play along, making up the sounds my awful pianos weren't making, in my head, and also singing along like Gould, for the same reason, partially. 

    When I figured out I was making the sounds all up cognitively, and never actually experiencing the sounds I craved, is when I became a tone junkie and entered the nether world of tech-dom.  I wanted to hear the sound not just pretend I heard the sound. Its been all downhill since then...not really...but it took 15 years to create the sound I wanted to hear.  


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    Jim Ialeggio
    grandpianosolutions.com
    Shirley, MA
    978 425-9026
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  • 5.  RE: Ricardo Muti Plays Piano

    Registered Piano Technician
    Posted 12-29-2020 23:10
    I had the same experience you described Jim. The thing about really good performers is they can also "suggest" what one should be hearing to an audience, an the audience can be receptive. In fact we will never fully escape this conundrum because we always want to "hear" more if our sensibilities are duly needy for musically intelligible experiences.

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    Edward McMorrow
    Edmonds WA
    425-299-3431
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  • 6.  RE: Ricardo Muti Plays Piano

    Registered Piano Technician
    Posted 12-30-2020 07:45
    I have found that people who read music VERY well tend to be less critical about tuning. OTOH those who don't READ so well but play largely by ear tend to be more critical of the tuning. Although not universal, it is an observation I have made over time. 

    Pwg

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    Peter Grey
    Stratham NH
    603-686-2395
    pianodoctor57@gmail.com
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  • 7.  RE: Ricardo Muti Plays Piano

    Posted 12-30-2020 09:42
    Well, this has brought some interesting responses!
    As you watch the video, scanning across the collection on top of the piano, are we tuners surprised by the condition of the piano? Tuning this piano is not a priority in the Muti studio.

    As Jim Ialeggio and Ed McMorrow highlight, how we experience music and the objective sound waves are not necessarily the same thing.

    Schnabel wrote about hearing the music in multiple overlapping layers during the performance as he negotiated the differences between his ideal of the music, what the piano was really doing, and his attempt to correct and reconcile the differences. 

    An elderly member of the Berlin Philharmonic said the sound of the musicians changed as soon as Furtwangler walked into the room because "now they heard themselves the way he heard them."

    In terms of the magic of our work, my current delusions favor what happens between the movement of the hand and the moment the hammer leaves the string. That is where it seems the player, the composer, the audience and the instrument can enter into something that seems like a responsive collaboration. 
    Or maybe it's just my imagination...or the need of my heart for something to believe for a moment.

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    Ed Sutton
    ed440@me.com
    (980) 254-7413
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  • 8.  RE: Ricardo Muti Plays Piano

    Posted 12-30-2020 12:05
    I've heard some atrocious sounding pianos in videos posted on YOUTUBE,  I guess people out there are deaf!


    Frank French
    970-644-7207








  • 9.  RE: Ricardo Muti Plays Piano

    Registered Piano Technician
    Posted 12-30-2020 14:02
    The tuner tried to get in there but was prohibited  by all the stuff stacked on the lid.  So typical of academia.  I'm in the middle of the lid clearing shuffle at the university right now.





  • 10.  RE: Ricardo Muti Plays Piano

    Registered Piano Technician
    Posted 12-30-2020 10:14
    I think this guy must have tuned the piano last week. "TheMaximillian" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pOBwn2odX-g. He has a lot of videos on tuning and repair techniques..
    Paul McCloud
    San Diego




  • 11.  RE: Ricardo Muti Plays Piano

    Posted 12-30-2020 11:05
    <An elderly member of the Berlin Philharmonic said the sound of the musicians changed as soon as Furtwangler walked into the room because "now they heard themselves the way he heard them."

    This happens all the time. Back when I was choral conducting, we did a concert. Half the concert was the chorus I trained, and half concert the same exact voices, but  another guy trained. Listening to the concert afterwards the difference in tone was amazing. A husband of one of the choir members said, "wow, those are the same voices", remarking on the difference between the sound of the same voices singing, but under two, conductors.  I used to spend a good 20 min "tuning" the chorus back then, training them to relish the sensation of dissonance as well as consonance. Also that dissonance, as well as consonance are highly resonant.

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    Jim Ialeggio
    grandpianosolutions.com
    Shirley, MA
    978 425-9026
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  • 12.  RE: Ricardo Muti Plays Piano

    Registered Piano Technician
    Posted 12-30-2020 12:39

    Jim, I recently came across a long recording of the Messiah, from San Francisco, and among other virtues the choir seems to be the best in tune I've ever heard.??

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2-QV_I-xseA&t=7136s