Well, you CAUT's have touched on one of my pet subjects (not quite a pet peeve.): how hard to work on shift work, and to what end.
I must agree with Kent Webb when he asserts that the one thing that is completely consistent across pretty much all artists on all occasions is that they would like more. This is his comment from Steinway's long history of working with artists.
So what, in reference to the shift preparation, would provide more? And of what? I will refer to what I think of a shift that is very well set-up:
Well, IMHO, the "first shift position"--between strings and striking all 3 strings--provides a quieter and more cottony (wooly) sound. A small but definite extension of the tone range.
The "second position"--missing the left string--provides a noticeably different timbre, AND a significantly longer "after sound". Because the left string is not struck, it robs a bit of power at the start and returns it later when it comes into sync with the other two.
I am aware that it is a lot of work to set up a piano this way. There are even pianos that sound odd enough with "second position" that it is likely to be rarely used. The nice thing about a very well-set-up shift is that one can restrict shifting to "position one" with a turn of the stop screw. And then restore its availability for an artist that would like to use it.
For the CAUT setting, I would like to confess that our philosophy at the UW is best summed as triage. We try very hard to have our best performance pianos prepared so that they would be perfectly comfortable in The Basement. Our piano faculty pianos the same, except that the service interval is much longer, resulting in periods where the shift is perhaps less than ideal. But when they are freshly regulated, full shift.
And so on. We have pianos that pretty much get tuned when they are used, even if it is once a decade. The level of "neglect" increases as the importance of the instrument goes down. Our very best work when we work, and if "they" want more of that, they can find $$$.
There's lots on HOW to prepare the shift, but knowledge is only a start. It is, for me, definitely a skill that has to be practiced regularly.
And the result for us is that, even though I do not have notes or recordings to prove this, I would assert that ALL of the artists that come to play in our President's Piano Series (5-6 top level players each year) use the shift. Some of them quite a lot.
It seems to me that they use it "by ear", not by the position that's "supposed" to be used.
Doug Wood
University of Washington School of Music
------------------------------
Douglas Wood
Seattle WA
206-935-5797
------------------------------