Store visits – Steinway in Hamburg

Steinway Pianos

Factory visits are not generally easy but Steinway and Sons have a nice flagship store near the factory and if you are interested in their pianos, it is worth a trek out. One of their technicians was voicing a Steinway D while I was there so I did not get to play much while I was there (although I did touch a Boston for pretty much the first time that I think).

How did I get out there? Number 3 Bus and number 180 buses. The 180 was not 100% reliable that day but this is hardly Steinway’s fault.

I did get to see a Noa in blue. It was a B, and it was gorgeous to look at. Someone had already reserved it. I envied these unknowns.

Steinway Pianos

The most beautiful piano to look at was one of the Crown Jewels in Olive – I’m sorry I did not have an opportunity to play that but it was truly beautiful to look at.

Steinway Pianos

In the recital room, there were three Concert Ds, and at least one was fitted with Spirio. I have always had some rather mixed feelings about the idea of player pianos but in a discussion with the technician and the store manager, I’m increasingly sold on it. The technician, whose name has escaped me now, pointed out that they can now stream live concerts from a concert hall to a Spirio R equipped piano and had done it for Vikingur Olafsson’s trip to the Elbphilharmonie. I could fantasize about a winter evening sitting in my living room having a concert by one of the best concert pianists in the world streamed to my piano with the sound benefits that go there. Although I’d love to see how they replicate Daniil Trifonov’s touch.

A brace of Bs and a C

Steinway also had a pop up shop in Alsthaus, the main department store in central Hamburg. I believe it ends end of September 2024. Claudia recommended that I go and have a look at the Sunburst upright there because it had a particularly nice sound. So I did.

Sunburst

They were also running weekend concerts there, and the morning after that concert, I went and had a look at the Steinway B that was in the pop up shop and I did play both it and the Sunburst. There are radical differences between the grand and upright Steinways – the uprights are slightly heavier to play – but it’s interesting to do it. I might aspire to a Steinway B at some point in my life but my journey has, afterall, started with a digital Kawai CA59.

One thing I do have to reiterate is that I spoke to several Steinway staff between both the Flagship and the Pop-Up. Steinway’s staff are unfailingly polite, very open and welcoming. In particular (despite not remembering his name), I would like to underline the very interesting and broad conversation I had with Steinway’s technician (who was voicing the D when I arrived) which covered the need to be not so conservative, views on several top concert pianists, the recognition of how some pianists make you want to play more (Olafsson in particular here).

I’m always honest to say I am not buying today but I’ve found that many Steinway sales staff put the time. Unfailingly they know what they are talking about and I have never met any who do not play themselves. They understand.

Repertoire selection, reflections and more

One of the things I do when I finish one exam – okay, it looks like I have done tonnes of them but really I have not – is allow myself to look forward to Exam N+1. In practical terms, this means that when I finished Grade 5, I could select pieces for Grade 8 and now that Grade 6 is done, the next up is ARSM.

I don’t have a teacher at the moment so there is an element of suggesting that maybe I should wait. But I have one very clear criteria about pieces that I prepare for exams and it is this: I have to like them. Thus, I’m going to choose them, and while I’ll take general advice like “cover several time periods”, I’ll not be told what to learn to play. I’m 52 years old I don’t have all that much time to be lived. You can see the current state of affairs in my exam planning here under Goals and Objectives.

The ARSM recital length is 30 minutes. Assuming I go for the highest choices on my list so far, eg, some Brahms, Fauré, Gershwin and Ravel, I have accounted for 21 minutes. So I will look at adding possibly one of Granados’ Goyescas too. I will still need to find something vaguely Baroque and I probably can’t escape Bach this time. Or possibly Scarlatti.

One of the approaches I take there is to just listen to the options. There may some nice things in WTC that appeal, there may be some Haydn. The issue is the time balance. I can’t give 12 minutes to a Bach piece I don’t actively dislike but don’t really want to learn when Pavane Pour Un Enfant Defunt is there and has been on my learning list forever.

In any case, for both Grade 8 and ARSM, learning playlists are being put together and this will hopefully allow me to identify a 5 minute piece that demonstrates depth.

20240824 Practice Diary

It’s been a while since I’ve been practising, sadly. When I got to Hamburg I had not played in about 3 weeks. But I am getting back there this week and what am I working on.

Liszt Consolation Number 2. This is a gorgeous piece of Accessible Liszt for which the left hand starts on a half between the first and second beat. It’s not a polyrhythm but I am finding it a bit counter intuitive. There are moments it comes right for me and I think god, how can I create something so beautiful, and then there are moments it does not.

Rameau Les Cyclopes. I love this and the first page of it is mostly a joy to work with. It’s not listenable (sorry to my Tonic stream audience) as a performance yet as there is a pesky arpeggio in it which must surely have been easier on a harpsichord. So this is very much the subject of slow practice and I need to start putting time in on metronome practice with arpeggios in general.

Repertoire: I keep practising three of the pieces I did for Grade 6 as they are appropriate for, inter alia, playing Steinways in piano stores. Those pieces were by Mendelssohn, Rebikov and CPE Bach. CPE Bach does not work most mornings for some reason and yet it’s the one I use to warm up mostly.

Sight reading: this week I took two pieces from the issue of Pianist sitting on my piano (well one of them =- I have two). It’s the August-September Edition and the two pieces were:

  • Aria by Antonio Fragoso. He was a young composer when he died – 1897 to 1918 so this is basically late Romanticish. It’s a pretty piece in Gminor which makes extensive use of the sustain pedal. Worth a look if you are looking for sightreading practice. Pianist marked it Intermediate
  • Eastern Promise by Melanie Spanswick. This is in A Minor with one or two rhythm tests in it for all that it is a short piece. Again, good sightreading practice if this is a weak point you are trying to fix.

Neither of these pieces are on my 40 pieces challange which has pretty much fallen apart. With 4 months left in the year, I will need to scale that done and reassess how I manage it as a project for next year (or I could star the project a new this week which which case I am 5% in. I will reflect on that the next time I am staring out the window of a bus. At some point, I need to write a bit on sight reading, how I feel about it, and what I want to be able to do.

I did no scales this week. I am a very bad person.

Hothouse flowers

I’m inclined to think that I should spend less time on social media. There’s an ABRSM focused group on FaceBook and during the week, a teacher noted that she had several 8 year olds passing ABRSM Grade 8 and she wanted to know if this happened much internationally.

Leaving aside the fact that the whole grade thing is a British-colony centric thing, the general view was that no, it wasn’t all that common, and additionally, was not positively considered.

There’s no way I would have been ready for Grade 8 at the age of 8 and I was generally precocious. I’m not sure how kids would be able to complete the required Grade 5 theory by that age to be honest. Nevertheless, I assume there are occasional cases.

I don’t have children and I am not a music teacher but I realised a while ago, that as an adult, I didn’t find the streams of tiny children playing Fantasie Impromptu by Chopin to be all that impressive. I mean, it’s impressive for the kids that they can make their fingers do it, but it’s not impressive for the society that causes it to happen. I’m inclined to the Let Children Be Children mode – they should be out playing with friends, getting their hands dirty and all and yet somehow…And childhood geniuses don’t magically appear or spring out of nowhere. An awful lot of work goes into creating one. The question is whether it is a benefit to the child or not…on that I’m not sure the answer is a clear yes.

Not least that for every 100 prodigies which get flagged by the media at an early age, not many of them make it to adulthood as successful musicians. I’m inclined to look more at those who are still playing gifted at the age of 17 or 18.