Klarinet Archive - Posting 000027.txt from 2004/08

From: =?iso-8859-1?q?Tony=20Pay?= <tony_pay@-----.uk>
Subj: [kl] Piano lids
Date: Mon, 2 Aug 2004 09:35:24 -0400

I heard a violin and piano sonata recital here in Siena a few days ago. The
venue was a large church, so the acoustics weren't particularly good -- you had
to sit quite close to get any sort of clarity. But also, in the first half,
the sound the players were making wasn't good. It was too direct, because the
walls were a long way away, so there were no helpful reflections. The violin
sounded buzzy and undernourished, whilst the piano was unclear.

But the performers had also opted for the very short stick. This was clearly a
mistake because of the obscuring of the piano detail. (As Ben has pointed out,
that's because the upper partials are selectively reduced by the almost closed
lid.) So we told them in the interval to put the lid up on full stick. This
they did, with the result that everything was much better in the second half --
including the violin sound! Just having the inside of the piano as an
additional system of reflectors a few feet away made a big difference to the
quality.

I'd been aware of the effect before, but in the context of this particular
concert it was startlingly apparent. (It shows it's always worth getting a
friend to listen to the general rehearsal, so that they can make judge the
effect of changes of this sort.)

Tony

---------------------------------------------------------------------
Klarinet is a service of Woodwind.Org, Inc. http://www.woodwind.org