Notes from the Berkshires:Day 8

6/8, 9.04 p.m.

The weather here in the Pittsfield/Lenox corridor has been, by all accounts, unseasonably lovely and dry. Good for us, good for the pianos. Sounds like it’s about to change, however. The current forecast has one of those pretty unambiguous statements along the lines of “predicted rainfall amounts of…” which are rarely present unless they (whomever “they” are) are pretty darn sure it’s going to rain, and significantly. So – here we go, into humidity-land.

I worked on two pianos today: the second B in the Maple studio, and an M which lives in the conductor’s room at Ozawa Hall. We’ve had a few discussions about voicing now, and so I spent most of the time on the B dealing with hammer/string mating, filing, and needling, trying to even out the tone. The tricky part is voicing for the shift pedal, because if that sounds good, it’s possible that it comes at the expense of some of the power of the full three-string unison. Fortunately, we have time to experiment a little right now, and I had some good times bringing notes up and down by alternating needling and polishing. The M in Ozawa has already had some of this work done, but hadn’t been fully regulated yet (one of the weirdnesses of having all four of us moving around is that sometimes things get done to pianos out of what would be a “normal” sequence), so that was my task. I’m starting to get the hang of setting key dip and then using aftertouch as a diagnostic and measurement tool right away. If someone had told me two weeks ago that I’d be using aftertouch to set blow distance, I wouldn’t have known what they were talking about.

Also continuing to enjoy the Crawford book. There are some great passages on the state of college education, and some hilarious (in a sort of chilling way) descriptions of life in the cubicle-filled workplace. I’ll definitely be recommending this to some friends.