Pianotech

  • 1.  New unequal temperament recordings

    Posted 10-17-2023 20:30

    Having had comments of appreciation for some former recordings the following might be of interest and are rather the ultimate test for the sort of tuning I'm doing to be universally useful.

    Scriabin

    Scriabin - Fantasie in B minor Op.28 in unequal temperament

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    Scriabin - Fantasie in B minor Op.28 in unequal temperament
    "Unequal temperament is unsuitable for Scriabin." Really? This recording demonstrates that whatever the academic arguments, Hammerwood based unequal temperament tuned by David Pinnegar improves the sound of the instrument and envelopes the performer in a soundscape which adds to performance.
    View this on YouTube >

    Whilst writing, the final chord of this piece for me rather stands out.

    Ravel

    RAVEL in Unequal Temperament - ONDINE - Gaspard de la Nuit

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    RAVEL in Unequal Temperament - ONDINE - Gaspard de la Nuit
    RAVEL in Unequal Temperament - ONDINE - Gaspard de la Nuit
    View this on YouTube >

    and in my opinion these recordings are an accurate representation of the instrument. They were achieved with a mix of a close mic at the edge of the instrument, a Blumlein stereo ribbon, with a pair of vintage ribbon mics a couple of metres away to get more of the room acoustic in the mix.

    If you enjoy the Scriabin the full concert by this pianist is on 

    Haydn, Chopin, Scriabin, Mendelssohn, Clara Schumann piano unequal temperament

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    Haydn, Chopin, Scriabin, Mendelssohn, Clara Schumann piano unequal temperament
    Haydn, Chopin, Scriabin, Mendelssohn, Clara Schumann on piano in unequal temperament. 0:00:00 Introduction 0:04:56 F. J. Haydn (1732-1809) - Piano Sonata in C major, Hob.XVI: 50 - Allegro 0:11:06 Adagio in Meantone 0:17:35 Allegro molto 0:20:28 F. Chopin (1810-1849) - Barcarolle in F sharp major Op. 60 0:29:55 A.
    View this on YouTube >

    including an unscheduled break into Meantone for the Haydn slow movement.

    If you enjoy the Ravel there's more from this pianist on a similar but later Bechstein

    Musical evening at Frant Chopin and Liszt in unequal temperament

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    Musical evening at Frant Chopin and Liszt in unequal temperament
    A recital by Candlelight on a vintage Bechstein in Frant in unequal temperament
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    although less well recorded and heard again -

    Chopin & Liszt Unequal Temperament piano recital

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    Chopin & Liszt Unequal Temperament piano recital
    00:00 Introduction 04:06 F. Chopin. 2 Notturni Op.9 No.1 10:08 2 Notturni Op.9 No.1 15:20 F. Liszt. Les jeux d'eau à la Villa d'Este 23:31 Introduction to Chopin Polonnaise 28:03 F. Chopin. Polacca op.26 no.2 37:47 Introduction to Liszt reworking of other composers 38:48 F. Liszt. Ständchen 45:34 Introduction to Chopin Mazurkas 47:56 F.
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    and 

    Chopin and Liszt - an informal tutorial - historic pianos and unequal temperament performance

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    Chopin and Liszt - an informal tutorial - historic pianos and unequal temperament performance
    An informal recital before dinner . . . The Master compares Liszt and Chopin and talks afterwards about nuances of performance.
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    Sonnenlink Viennese dances & Brahms Hungarian dances and Dvorak Piano unequal temperament

    .

    Sonnenlink Viennese dances & Brahms Hungarian dances and Dvorak Piano unequal temperament

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    Sonnenlink Viennese dances & Brahms Hungarian dances and Dvorak Piano unequal temperament
    An evening of music at the Sonnenlink Bio Hotel https://mani-sonnenlink.com/ at Pyrgos near Stoupa in the Mani. The piano is tuned to unequal temperament which brings music to life more and projects in the amphitheatre.
    View this on YouTube >

     demonstrates Brahms with an underpowered Yamaha C3 satisfying an outside amphitheatre in Greece and 

    Equinox Kardamyli - Vintage 4 string Bluthner in unequal temperament - Bach & Grieg

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    Equinox Kardamyli - Vintage 4 string Bluthner in unequal temperament - Bach & Grieg
    A formerly neglected Bluthner now brings musical life and delights to the High Street in Kardamyli at Equinox with pianist and string players wanting to play and perform. Visitors are welcome to come in and practice, here with Bach and Grieg. For tuning elsewhere antespam@gmail.com is the tuner's email address.
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    a four string Bluthner - although not entirely stable after the shock of a pitch raise and

    Steinway Model O in concert hall use with unequal temperament tuning

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    Steinway Model O in concert hall use with unequal temperament tuning
    Uploaded by latribe on 2023-09-27.
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    a Steinway Model O performing in a situation where normally perhaps a larger instrument might have been expected.

    Of course all of these tunings would fail PTG requirements. I refuse to tune Equal temperament. 

    It's becoming apparent that people are getting bored of ET and recently I was asked to travel to the middle of France to tune an upright Bechstein for a composer who wanted to explore differing interval sizes. He'd also heard about 432 but after my work, was convinced.

    Musical A=440 432Hz is SPOOF!

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    Musical A=440 432Hz is SPOOF!
    The fashion for 432Hz is spoof. Tuning one note on a piano to 432 won't tune other frequencies to 864, 216, 108, 54 and 27 because inharmonicity makes the piano not behave in that way and none of the other 88 notes will relate to 432 either.
    View this on YouTube >

    Greetings from England and best wishes,

    David P



    ------------------------------
    David Pinnegar BSc ARCS
    Hammerwood Park, East Grinstead, Sussex, UK
    +44 1342 850594
    "High Definition" Tuning
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  • 2.  RE: New unequal temperament recordings

    Posted 10-21-2023 22:20

    David, thanks for sharing the recordings. A nice sounding set of performances. Can you give an estimate of how many historic temperaments a tuner would have to deal with in practice? You've previously mentioned the Killner and the Kimberger III temperaments but I imagine that you deal with a whole set of Well and Meantone and Just Intonation temperaments in your work using multiple pianos. The video with the Killner temperament tuning that you previously provided (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9AwZDdBzi0M) discusses the "dissonant (musical) keys," as he calls them, and illustrates the need for multiple historic temperaments. Owen Jorgensen has over 50 temperaments in his book (what he calls "historical temperaments"), but there must be hundreds or thousands of them that were previously in use. As Owen wrote: "music sounds most effective when performed in the original temperaments."

     

    Speaking of historic temperaments, have you any thoughts on digital pianos, particularly the newer hybrid pianos? Most of them sold have no strings. With one Yamaha N3X or one Kawai GX-2 Aures 2 for a performance, the pianist uses an app on a tablet (or phone) to select which concert acoustic piano sound to replicate/imitate, which historic temperament (or a custom temperament or ET) to use per piece being performed, which physical characteristics to select for touch and pedals, desired damper pedal sounds, and a whole lot more. If you missed David Reed of Kawai's talk on hybrid pianos at the July Convention (like I did!), there is also Scott Cole's article on them in the August, 2021, PTG Journal; and the user manual for the Kawai "PianoRemote" tablet control app can be found at https://www2.kawai.co.jp/emi-web/pianoremote-docs/en/.

     

    Regards, Norman



    ------------------------------
    Norman Brickman
    Potomac Piano Service
    Potomac, Maryland
    potomacpiano@verizon.net
    https://potomacpiano.com
    (301) 983.9321
    ------------------------------



  • 3.  RE: New unequal temperament recordings

    Posted 10-23-2023 18:34
    Dear Norman

    Please forgive delay - gmail decided to hide Pianotech notifications
    for me in the naughty folder :-(

    In my opinion there are only three historical temperaments that are
    important and at the end of the day for general purpose use only one.

    1/4 comma Meantone is really important for musicological research.
    Playing the Mozart Sonatas in 1/4 comma is like wearing "sense of
    humour" spectacles, showing up where Mozart decided to be amusing. A
    pianist playing Chopin at the weekend said that she found it even
    worked for Chopin although I'm not wholly comfortable about that.
    There are some things for which it doesn't and Beethoven too. 1/6
    comma Meantone might be the authentic tuning for Mozart but it's too
    subtle for most people to hear and doesn't really do anything for the
    piano, taking the pure 3rds away from purity.

    Kellner and Kirnberger III both use 7 perfect fifths. I've seen
    commentary about Kellner sounding like Werkmeister III but in my
    opinion Werkmeister III is stronger and from my experience,
    unpleasantly so. Tuned in the standard way, people will get differing
    results from Kellner, some sweeter than others and some distasteful
    upon the opening Db to F notes of the opening of the Raindrop Prelude.
    When I used to tune in the standard way, I often had to do some
    cheating on that tenor Db - C#3 - but try it and see how you fare.

    My method of tuning reliably I want to be working with Steinways so
    that they will roll it out on concert platforms with their hire fleet
    of pianos. If I talk about it publicly people will just regard it as
    an option brought to light by that oddball Englishman. The relevant
    thing here is that what I'm doing puts the sound of the instrument on
    steroids and improves its sound. Perhaps the Ravel
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KHwLSebpvE8 demonstrates the point as
    well as suitability of the tuning for all repertoire.

    Kirnberger III is useful for people who like strong curry and who want
    to hear key shifts in the spotlight without the extreme of Meantone.

    Kirnberger III is also great on fortepianos with a thin sound, and
    straight strung 19th century instruments and particularly the 19th
    century Broadwoods which were (nicely) tonally deficient
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tuwylPz_Gcg

    The 1802 Stodart grand I normally tune in Kirnberger III
    https://youtu.be/jouFU6ut6Cs and likewise a Broadwood Cottage Grand of
    1869

    At the Hammerwood Park concert at the weekend there was an interesting
    conjunction of two Polonaises by Franz Xavier Mozart - one in F minor
    and the next in D major. The question about tunings is whether they do
    what they say they do on the tin. Written in 1810 perhaps
    https://wmich.edu/mus-theo/courses/keys.html represents a helpful
    guide to the 19th century. Certainly following F minor, the "key of
    the grave" with D major really did reveal the trumpets and holiday
    celebrations.https://youtu.be/KdO5LMOfw7s In the recording of the
    Stodart, perhaps Mozart's fantasie in D minor really was melancholy
    womanliness.

    The fact that Chopin was less keen on composing after his old tuner
    died might be a straw in the wind to indicate that his old tuner was
    old-fashioned, and that Montal's shiny new one size fits all tuning
    wasn't really inspirational. But so much of the good composers' music
    right the way through to Ravel, Debussy and Fauré sounds so good in
    unequal temperament and knowing that Erards were tuning unequally in
    France suggests that perhaps there was common tuning for people to
    have on their shiny pianos in their Drawing Rooms to show that they
    could afford an expensive instrument on which to put the flowers and
    later the photos, and play chopsticks upon, and other tunings for the
    concert stage. I've come across people maintaining that unequal
    temperament was used in Vienna until quite late and a recent
    comprehensive textbook examines tuning in England and France but seems
    to omit Vienna entirely. So much piano making emerged from Vienna that
    it cannot be ignored.

    From my long standing experiments and corpus of recordings, when heard
    in this line of temperaments there seems to be a lot that's right
    about the keys chosen and their audible effects leaning towards those
    documented by Schubart.

    Provided they can tame it, no-one tuning Kellner as their only tuning
    on the modern piano will go far wrong. For my part, the tuning I do
    based on Kellner makes equal temperament redundant.

    Best wishes

    David P



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    David Pinnegar, B.Sc., A.R.C.S.
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    +44 1342 850594




  • 4.  RE: New unequal temperament recordings

    Posted 09-12-2024 08:08
    It has been with particular pleasure that some members have expressed appreciation for recordings in the unequal temperament domain.

    It was with great pleasure to be able to tune for some brilliant musicians recently and hope that people might enjoy the results

    https://youtu.be/Wiu68b85N1Y is Brahms and Schumann violin sonatas in an incredible atmosphere. In the Brahms violin sonata one can see the mirror smooth water of the lake at Tun in Switzerland with waves lapping the shore, leaves blowing around and birds flying overhead with clouds in the sky and thunder in the mountains.
    https://youtu.be/JvrGV58ZsAU is an extraordinary concert at https://mani-sonnenlink.com/ of Schonberg, Schubert, Fritz Kreisler and Lily Boulanger
    https://youtu.be/dkTFemcI-Dw is a snippet of Adolfo Barabino playing at the Sonnenlink amphitheatre and https://youtu.be/xhdNBBtsFn4 testing the piano in the 2000 year old city of ancient Messene. The use of Yamaha baby C3 instruments in both places might be a surprise.

    However, one member with whom I have been on friendly terms wrote to me in regard to my suggestion that professional exams should be available beyond the monopoly of ET that I was following a personal agenda. In response I gave the following thoughts - 

    It's not actually my personal agenda but one of the unspeaking many who have documented unequal temperaments for many years, worked on incorporating them into ETDs but had their work wasted on account of no-one using them, and of the many thousands who have accessed my corpus of work and commented on those videos that they prefer the unequal temperament presentation of music.

    What are we about? Getting people to enjoy the piano. Getting people to enjoy piano music in the face of DubStep. Ensuring the ongoing healthiness of the piano industry. 

    For these reasons we have to escape the confines of the misdirection of ET with cross stringing muddling up the sound causing players to regard that right foot pedal as a loud enhancement rather than sustain. Too many "musicians" are playing the notes as abstract patterns rather than feeling the music and conveying it.

     - and for such reasons begged his indulgence of toleration rather than censure.


    Best wishes

    David P

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    David Pinnegar, B.Sc., A.R.C.S.
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    +44 1342 850594