David Owen Norris
It’s surprisingly difficult to hide three grand pianos in a concert hall. The Music Department and the Institute for Sound and Vibration Research at Southampton University share a student who wanted to do some experiments on what people think of piano tone when they don’t know what sort of piano it is. So, our Mason & Hamlin was taken to join the Steinway and the Fazioli already in the Turner Sims, our concert hall. The problem was to conceal them from the audience. Yards and yards of black theatrical drapes, rickety stepladders and microphone stands were a good start, but then we found that although the pianos were invisible, you could tell whether it was the left, right, or middle piano you were hearing. Even this degree of identification is undesirable to randomising statisticians. We shuffled the pianos, juggling with the angles of the walls, until they all sounded as if they were in the middle of the invisible space.
Then we let the audience in, and I played Bach, Debussy, Messiaen, Maxwell Davies and more on each piano – in a computer-generated random order, tiptoeing invisibly from one to the next to give the audience no clue – to explore counterpoint, pedalled harmony, extreme registers, melody (for it was Max’s Farewell to Stromness that I played) and so on. The audience filled in its questionnaire, and we are presently analysing their preferences. A pleasing preliminary finding, however, is that each of the three pianos was considered ‘best’ in at least one of the tests. Not that this was an experiment to find the ‘best’ piano – it all depends what you’re playing, clearly.
Bösendorfers are making a renewed effort to be the best, mind you. They’ve computer-designed a new piano from scratch, and they unveiled it at London’s Conway Hall before an audience of piano mavens. We all marvelled. The touch, in particular, is amazing. It still sounds like a Bösendorfer, which will please some like me (my most modern piano is a Bozie), yet mightily relieve other manufacturers: for Bösendorfers, like all other makes of piano, have their automatic detractors. Unless anyone would like to borrow my theatrical drapes? That’ll fool ’em!
Other makes of piano are available, of course. The brightest news from the piano world is that Brighton Pavilion has got its Tomkison back. This elaborate grand pianoforte was made especially for the building in the 1820s, and shares something of its style. There’s even a watercolour by architect John Nash himself, showing the piano in situ. I look forward to playing it. Like every piano, it will be Best at Something. Just a question of finding out What.
David Owen Norris is a pianist, composer and Radio 3 presenter
I played Bach, Debussy, Maxwell Davies and more on three pianos in a computer-generated random order