Six Grand Pianos

Missed out on Bonfire Night celebrations as I was flying to Rome with the 6 members of pianocircus. That said, we did see the odd firework in the skies over Heathrow.

We were in Rome for a concert on Tuesday at the prestigious IUC at the University of Rome, using 6 grand pianos - all Steinways (3x Model D full grands and 3x Model Bs). I was asked by organiser how we wanted them arranged. Sent diagram alternating them DBDBDB in the usual pianocircus circle, and then they came back and asked which serial number we wanted where. May now become a Steinway spotter and collect serial numbers - beats train spotting and collecting names from Eddie Stobart trucks!

Early start to position the pianos and then away to explore Rome whilst the piano tuner spent the next 5 (yes FIVE) hours tuning. Note for future - the Italians appear to use A442 rather than the A440 we usually have in the UK. Thankfully the sound crew were very patience and quiet setting up around him.

The concert was fab - especially Steve Reich's "Six Pianos". Sounds even better on real grands. The phasing of the piece creates interesting beating - audibly giving the psycho-acoustic image of a trumpet. I'm sure the audience must think I'm running a backing track. Anyway, thought I identified that David's entry was the one that created the impression...until he stopped playing and the phenomenon continued.

Why are TV crews so intrusive? They think that the concert is there purely for them to film. The 2 crew members spent lots of time moving (noisily) around the auditorium - all for a maximum of 3 minutes airtime. It was gladdening to discover that they are also the same around the world. 15 minutes before the start of the concert, I saw them setting up next to the mixer. They wanted a feed (in fact both cameramen wanted separate feeds!), so provided a mono mix form the stereo masters. The audience were already coming into the auditorium, so the only test feed I could give them was the sound of the pianos being tuned (again...) which (surprise, surprise) wasn't loud enough for them. Neither of the camera operators had headphones, all they were looking for was line level input at 0dB. The reality is that once all 6 pianos get going together it is "quite" loud and they would have got their recordings at an acceptable level. Not good enough for them, so they then started asking the sound crew for microphones! In the end, they settled for using the mics attached to their cameras.