Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. The question today is: What happens to old pianos? I’m going to tell you right now that what I’m going to share with you today is very disturbing. For those of you who love piano like
Welcome to Living Pianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. The subject today is about the similarities between the preludes and fugues of The Well-Tempered Clavier and Bach chorales. If you know the Well-Tempered Clavier you know that these are monumental works. Bach decided to write these preludes and fugues to celebrate the fact that it was finally possible for keyboard instruments to be tuned in such a way as to be able to play in all the keys. Before that, instruments had to be tuned for specific keys. So he decided to write preludes and fugues in every single major and minor key. But there are 48 preludes and fugues, because he did it twice! There are two books of preludes and fugues. The fugues are masters of counterpoint. The preludes are beautiful little gems in their own right.
The four-part writing in Bach chorales is really the basis for the writing of all of Western music, one could argue.
I had the good fortune of studying four-part harmony with my father when I was a child. I really mastered the art of voice leadings, doublings, and all of that. It stays with me to this day to understand the structure of the music I’m studying, as well as for composing, arranging and improvising. You can see the relationship between the Bach chorales, which are the pure four voice writing containing soprano, alto, tenor, and bass, parts, and what he did in the preludes and fugues. Naturally, none of the preludes are based upon strict four-voice writing, but they’re still based upon the same structure of harmony, voice leadings, doublings, and all of that. For example, if you take the famous C Major Prelude from Book 1, what would happen if it were played more like a four voice chorale? If I were to play it with some passing tones and other non-chord tones, it really wouldn’t be so different from a Bach chorale. But what about another prelude that maybe is not as obvious, like the C Minor Prelude, also from Book 1. Well, it really has the fundamental structure of a chorale as well.
Looking at the music of Bach, Beethoven, Brahms, Shostakovich, and other composers, you’ll see the same foundation of the essential elements of a Bach chorale.
It’s all just embellishment of one sort or another. Did you ever realize that? Everything back then has just grown like a forest of music from the original seeds of inspiration going back centuries! It’s really remarkable how the language of music has grown. And you can hear how the Bach chorale transcends into more complex music. We could go further, whether it’s Beethoven, the second movement of one of his sonatas, like the Opus 10 Number 1, for example. It’s essentially a chorale. It’s broken up, but it’s the same basic structure. It’s remarkable, isn’t it?
I want you to think about your music, whatever music you’re playing. Whether it’s 21st century or 15th century, even. Notice how these same elements have been in music all along, exemplified beautifully in Bach chorales. I hope this has been interesting for you! Thanks so much for joining me, Robert Estrin here at LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Resource.
For premium videos and exclusive content, you can join my Living Pianos Patreon channel! www.Patreon.com/RobertEstrin
Contact me if you are interested in private lessons. I have many resources for you! Robert@LivingPianos.com
Welcome to Living Pianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. The subject today is about the similarities between the preludes and fugues of The Well-Tempered Clavier and Bach chorales. If you know the Well-Tempered Clavier you know that these are monumenta
Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. Today I have an interesting question for you. Which are better, wood pianos or black ebony pianos? When you go to the symphony, onstage you see that classic black piano. You generally think of a piano as being black. But sometimes you see exotic woods, like rosewood. You see carved pianos, and they cost substantially more sometimes. But is there a benefit to wood pianos versus black pianos? That’s an interesting question with many ramifications.
Structurally and sonically, there is absolutely no difference between wood and ebony pianos.
There are many elements of the woods used in pianos that do make a tremendous difference in the sound quality. But pianos have had veneers on them for well over 100 years. So whatever the veneer is on top, whether it has a natural wood finish or a sprayed lacquer, whether it’s high gloss or satin, makes no difference in the sound of the piano. However, the wood underneath that finish, even on the rim of the piano can make a big difference in the tone of the piano. Many Asian production pianos utilize soft luan mahogany which is indigenous to the region. Luan rims are easier to bend than the hardwoods used in American and German pianos. So why do they do it? Since the soundboard is embedded into the rim, having a hardwood in the rim actually becomes part of the resonating chamber. So indeed the wood that a piano is made from does make a difference in the sound, but the finish does not. However, when piano companies are dealing with exotic woods, and intricate carved cases, they may naturally spend more time refining the instrument to the highest level since it provides a showcase for their work.
The wood of the soundboard has much more significance.
Almost all pianos today have spruce soundboards, but there are many different quality levels of spruce. Some soundboards are laminated woods with a cross grain. This kind of defeats the purpose of the fine spruce because generally the cement between those layers is going to inhibit the sound. But a laminated soundboard is far stronger, will last longer and is impervious to cracks, just like plywood is stronger than regular hardwood. So there are many things to consider about the different woods of a piano. For example, if you had the opportunity to have a wood piano or a black piano, and you really didn’t care one way or the other, black pianos tend to be more popular. So if you ever were to sell that piano, you might have an easier time selling a black piano than a wood piano.
There are people who love wood pianos and are willing to pay a premium.
With new pianos, wood finishes tend to cost a little more because they have to have matching veneers instead of essentially just spraying over with black paint. However, if you have a really beautiful wood piano, even though it might be harder to connect with someone who’s looking for that particular shade of wood, that person may be willing to pay a premium to get it. So there’s a lot to weigh here in choosing the finish of a piano. Ultimately you should get what you like because chances are, you’re not buying a piano to sell it. You’re buying a piano to enjoy it!
Choose the finish that you like best!
Get what you like! If you ever need to sell your piano, you want to have a long enough timeline so that you’re not under the gun. Because it’s not always easy to connect with someone looking for the piano you happen to have. Anything that’s relatively expensive, you want to have time to list it and get it into shape. But in terms of the sound and the playing, there is absolutely no difference in the finish of your piano!
Thanks so much for joining me, Robert Estrin here at LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Resource.
For premium videos and exclusive content, you can join my Living Pianos Patreon channel! www.Patreon.com/RobertEstrin
Contact me if you are interested in private lessons. I have many resources for you! Robert@LivingPianos.com
Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. Today I have an interesting question for you. Which are better, wood pianos or black ebony pianos? When you go to the symphony, onstage you see that classic black piano. You generally think of a p
Welcome to LivingPianos.com. I’m Robert Estrin. The subject today may sound strange to you. Today we’ll be discussing Brahms & Ravel versus Tchaikovsky & Beethoven. What could I possibly be talking about? These are four great composers, and this indeed is not a contest. It’s just an interesting observation, a fundamental difference among composers. There is something that Brahms and Ravel share that distinguishes them from Beethoven and Tchaikovsky. There is a fundamental difference in how they presented their music to the public, which lives on to this day. I wonder, do any of you know what the difference is?
Brahms and Tchaikovsky are both 19th century Romantic composers who wrote a lot of works.
Tchaikovsky wrote six symphonies, and Brahms wrote four symphonies. So the output of Tchaikovsky is a little bit bigger than Brahms in this regard. However, if you look at what orchestras typically program, it’s only three of the Tchaikovsky symphonies that get 90% of the play. The Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth symphonies are played constantly. They’re played in public performance and recording. If you were to search out how many different recordings there are of those latter three symphonies, it’s far greater than his first three symphonies. Not that those early works were mediocre, by any stretch of the imagination. However, the Fourth, Fifth and Sixth Symphonies are arguably better works than his earlier ones.
So what about Brahms? He wrote four symphonies. Could you say that maybe the third and fourth are better than the first two? I don’t think so. As a matter of fact, you might have a favorite, but you couldn’t honestly say that any one of those Brahms Symphonies is better than the next. Why is this?
Brahms destroyed any music he didn’t feel was on the absolute highest level!
We don’t know what Brahms wrote that wasn’t his absolute best. Tchaikovsky, on the other hand, wrote a lot of works. Some of them are phenomenally great, for example his B-flat Minor Piano Concerto. Everybody knows and loves that concerto. But that is his second piano concerto. What about his first concerto? I don’t even really know it, and you probably don’t either, because it’s seldom played. The second concerto is a blockbuster everybody knows and loves. So Tchaikovsky released whatever he had, whereas Brahms was more selective. And the same thing is true of Ravel.
Beethoven, on the other hand, wrote nine great symphonies.
Beethoven didn’t write any bad symphonies. However, generally, the odd-numbered symphonies are the ones that are really enriching, and played much more often than the even-numbered ones. They’re all great worthwhile works. But you could arguably say that his third, fifth, seventh and ninth are his most famous works for good reason. Not that any of them are bad works, because it’s all great music! But there are some Beethoven works that are arguably better than others, and have lived on more.
Beethoven wrote 32 piano sonatas. There are some that are absolutely stupendous! They’re all more than worthwhile. But some are arguably better, like the Appassionata, the Hammerklavier and the Pathetique. Yet Beethoven wrote other sonatas that are not played as much. They’re still worthwhile works. He let it all out, for better or for worse, and they’re all worthwhile! But some are more substantial works than others.
If Brahms and Ravel had released more of their music that wasn’t up to their highest standard, would we be richer for it?
I certainly wouldn’t want to have less Beethoven and Tchaikovsky works out there! Even if some of the pieces are not among the absolute cream of those composers, it’s still nice to be able to hear and enjoy those works. So it’s a different methodology. I’m curious as to what your feeling is about composers being very selective and self-editing (or burning as Brahms did!) before the music even gets out to the public. We only have the greatest works of Brahms and Ravel. But with Beethoven and Tchaikovsky, there are some works that are still great, but not as great as some of their other works.
I hope this has been interesting for you! Let me know how you feel about this in the comments! Can you name composers you feel released things they perhaps shouldn’t have? Or composers you wish had released more? It’s a tough thing as a composer, knowing which compositions to release and which ones to hold back. The same thing is true as a performer. If you have recordings of concerts, or recordings that you made in the studio, which ones should you release and which ones should you hold back? Thanks so much for joining me, Robert Estrin here at LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Resource.
For premium videos and exclusive content, you can join my Living Pianos Patreon channel! www.Patreon.com/RobertEstrin
Contact me if you are interested in private lessons. I have many resources for you! Robert@LivingPianos.com
Welcome to LivingPianos.com. I’m Robert Estrin. The subject today may sound strange to you. Today we’ll be discussing Brahms & Ravel versus Tchaikovsky & Beethoven. What could I possibly be talking about? These are four great comp
Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. Today we have The Man of 1,000 Steinways, The Steinway Hunter, Bob Friedman! Bob Friedman goes way back in the piano industry and has probably found more Steinways than anybody I know! There are a lot of parallels in our lives. Bob is a piano technician, I’m a concert pianist. We both got into pianos because of various reasons and have been involved with them our whole lives. We’re going to have a nice, lively discussion here. So I want to welcome Bob Friedman. Hello Bob!
Bob Friedman:
Hi, Robert, thank you so much for interviewing me. I appreciate it very much.
Robert Estrin:
It’s a real pleasure! For people who are not familiar with you, because you’re kind of invisible to the public, Bob’s the man who locates and provides Steinways to countless piano rebuilders and stores all around the country and around the world. And he’s been doing it a heck of a long time! The parallels in our lives are so interesting. I got into pianos because of my teaching and my performing. Why don’t you tell us a little bit about how you got into it – as a piano technician. Is that right, Bob?
Bob Friedman:
Yeah. Actually I was speaking with my wife today and realized this is my golden anniversary, 50 years since I put my hands on a piano that needed a little bit of work. Interestingly enough, my father was also a concert pianist, but he never toured. He trained very early in life. But at a certain point in his teens, he put it down. You know as a concert pianist, you’re supposed to take the music out in front of you and memorize it. He refused to do that, so his agent let him walk. He put the piano down shortly after that. He never picked one up again until 1971.
In ’71, I was 17 years old. There was a gentleman who passed away who lived across the street from us who had a beautiful old Sohmer upright. I went into the house and saw the piano. The girl said it was for sale. So I dragged my father in there because I had seen him play at family parties, but I really had no idea how accomplished he was. My mother and I begged him to buy the piano. He didn’t want to do it, but we still begged him to do it. And he did it! He brought the piano home and he wailed on it! He played Rachmaninoff like the day he put the piano down when he was a kid. He’d never forgotten how to play!
I was taking mechanical drafting, architectural blueprint design in high school. I had some really good teachers show me mechanical know-how. The piano had one note that was always not working in the upper register. My father noticed, but he never called anybody in to fix it. So one day when he was at work, I took the action out of the piano. My mother walked through and she said, “What are you doing?” I said, “I’m going to figure out what’s wrong with this piano.” I noticed that one of the springs was out in the jack that pushes the hammer up and I fixed it! Later that night, he came home from work and I watched as he played the piano. I never told him I had fixed it. He played that note and it worked. He did a double-take. He must have figured it fixed itself! That’s where it started for me. And that was probably 4,000 Steinways ago.
Robert Estrin:
4,000 Steinways, wow!
Bob Friedman:
Well, I lived in a truck for almost 30 years traveling the country buying and selling pianos and meeting everybody I did business with. I’d go to everybody’s homes. I’ve had coffee with more people than Starbucks probably serves!
Robert Estrin:
I just read your book, The Steinway Hunter and I absolutely was drawn page to page. It is really compelling! It’s such a pleasurable read, I highly recommend it. It brought back so many memories of my life after I graduated from music conservatory. I was teaching piano at the time and the first question I would always ask students was, “Do you have a piano?” It was surprising how many people wanted lessons who didn’t have pianos! I knew that wouldn’t work. So that’s how I got into finding pianos. I’m sure we could swap stories about some of the crazy ways we’ve found pianos.
Bob Friedman:
I’ll be honest with you, I probably have 300 stories! But after three years of editing and 20 years of writing I used just 25 stories. I’m not a writer, but with the help of my dear wife and some very highly skilled editors who also had pianos in their lives, we made it happen. All of us had something in common. They love the piano and therefore they helped me with the book. But to finish another set of 30, 40, 50, stories… I mean, we have so many stories. We could probably sit here until all our hair falls out, just telling stories!
Robert Estrin:
I believe you! One of the things about pianos is that you’ve got to move them. I’ve moved hundreds, maybe more than hundreds of pianos. And that was back in the day when they were mostly those big, tall, heavy, upright pianos. I don’t know how I did it! I’m not a big man, but my back to this day, knock on wood, is strong, because I always lifted correctly.
Bob Friedman:
I’ve had nine rescinded discs in my back over the years! But I’ve always strengthened myself and I’ve come back. I had a blue dolly back then. I carry a picture of it with me, because it reminds me of a very good friend who is in the dedications in the book, his name was Henry Karen. And this is actually a picture of Henry’s dolly from when we both had blue dollies. He’s passed on now. He looked just like Jimmy Cagney. He pointed me in a direction when I was very young. He saw that I had a lot of children. I have five children, actually. He saw me driving up in an old beat up Matador wagon with a U-haul on the back. I used to deliver basically no name pianos to him. And then he had one Steinway. He looked at me and said, “You’re never going to be able to support your family with that. That’s the piano you want to go for.” He said, “Go for that, and you’ll do okay.” And that’s where it started. He gave me the tip. He said, “Stay with Steinway.”
Robert Estrin:
In the used market, there’s nothing like Steinway. Everybody knows the name and the power of that company. It’s the piano that everybody looks to restore. Because the fact of the matter is that in the used market, Steinway holds its value better than other pianos. So if somebody’s going to restore and put thousands of dollars into a piano, they might as well put it into a piano that’s going to sell for more. Here at Living Pianos, we actually celebrate all the great American and European pianos, which can represent phenomenal value. And as you well know, each piano is unique. There are some great pianos from a variety of manufacturers. But a great Steinway is still a great piano, and there are always people looking for them.
Bob Friedman:
They call it the standard piano of the industry. What’s interesting is that 1878 was the design of the tubular action frame and the duplex scale. It hasn’t changed much since then.
Robert Estrin:
Yes. It’s kind of amazing that pianos from the 1880s had some of the same scale designs they’re still making today. There was a documentary about Steinway a number of years ago. They said that if you took somebody from the 19th century and transplanted them into the New York factory today, there’d be a couple of new rigs, but they’d be pretty much right at home. Because fundamentally, they build pianos the same way they did over a hundred years ago, which is pretty remarkable.
Bob Friedman:
Absolute geniuses, they were! But they didn’t live long lives because every time they got a disease, it took them over. They almost died from exhaustion because they worked so hard. They were perfecting everything that they did.
Robert Estrin:
I remember back in the day before the internet was a thing my wife and I would hang out downtown. We were living in Bloomington, Indiana. I had graduated from school there in piano performance. I kind of fell in love with the small town. But we would hang out at the bookstand waiting for the Recycler classified newspaper to come out. As soon as it came out, we made a beeline for it to see if there were any good pianos in there. And then we would have quarters in our pockets and go to the nearest payphone, because this was before cell phones. If there were any deals we would try to get there as fast as we could!
Bob Friedman:
You’re absolutely right! That’s very cool!
Robert Estrin:
I always felt that that was the ultimate way to get pianos, to be there first. You gotta get there and find the pianos that really need restoration that somebody else wouldn’t even know what to do with. A diamond in the rough. But then later on, I met people who did things a little differently, more like a patient fisherman casting the net and just waiting, which is another approach instead of the hunter. But since you wrote the book, The Steinway Hunter, obviously you’ve been aggressive in finding these instruments in all sorts of ways. I’m wondering how technology has changed the way you work.
Bob Friedman:
When there was limited technology my mother was a very helpful tool and a catalyst to advertising for me. When I finally decided to go with Steinway and stay with Steinway, my mother worked in USA Today classifieds. This is in one of the stories from my book. My mother and two other women actually designed the USA Today classified network in a Gannett newspaper. They picked three people they thought could put this format together. She explained newspaper networks to me, and there were many newspaper networks in this country at that time. She said, “Go to the library and go in the Gale Book of Publications, and you’ll find every printed newspaper in the country. What you can do is call them up on the phone and just give them your ad.” My ad was,
“Steinway grand piano wanted, any age, any condition, will take cash and pickup,” which means I had to live in a truck for three decades!
There were about 25 networks out there. I had to call them on the phone and ask them to run the ad. They wouldn’t take credit cards in those days. You had to send them a check. So once your check got there, they printed the ad. Then all of a sudden, my ads started running in 15 states at the same time! When the calls started coming in, I had to get in the truck. There were no photographs. You couldn’t do what we do today seeing pictures on the internet of what you’re buying. So I literally had to live in a truck at truck stops because there were no cell phones and there was no GPS. I went into people’s houses and became friendly. I’d make the deal and carry the piano out. And if I wasn’t traveling with another person I’d have to go to the local gin mill and hire some people to help move the piano into the truck.
Robert Estrin:
I’m sure there are a lot of people who are watching this wondering how they can find a Steinway. So here’s a question I have for you: of all the Steinways you’ve seen, about 4,000 Steinways, how many were actually fairly good to go without doing substantial work?
Bob Friedman:
Very, very few. You can have a piano that’s 10 years old, that a cat lived in. You can have a piano that’s five years old, that the dog got jealous of and chewed the legs. In the dead of heat in the summertime when I would go as far as Chicago or Indiana or down to Texas and then come back to New York with 12-16 pianos side-by-side in a 24 foot truck, there was something very interesting that happened. Everybody’s house has a certain scent, whether it’s what they’ve cooked their whole lives or what the animals smell like, whatever it is. Everything your house collects, your piano collects because of the felt in the piano. It picks up the smells of the home. So you have to deodorize the piano when you get it back. But when it gets in the felt, and it’s an 80 or 100 year old piano, you’re not getting it out. So therefore the piano needs restoration, new hammers, new felt everywhere. So when I got back to New York City after one of these trips I opened the back of the truck and the smell from all these pianos being in people’s houses for a hundred years nearly knocked me off the bed! It was so disgusting. It was the smell of every piano that was in everybody’s house for 80, 100 years.
I equated that smell to the smell of success!
Robert Estrin:
Yeah, that’s right. You need to be willing to put that work into them. We get piano consignment offers literally every day. People have pianos for sale and almost everybody says, “The piano’s perfect. It’s great.” But people don’t know how much maintenance a piano requires in order to be good. To give you one extreme example, there was a piano back in Indiana years ago that somebody was trying to sell. They said, “I’ve got this great piano.” So, we went out to look at it. It was way out in the country. When we got there, we were walking through a field. We were led to, believe it or not, a greenhouse! It’s just a dirt floor! We got to the end of it and we saw this big old upright sunken maybe a foot into the mud. You could see that the wood was destroyed. This was a greenhouse. It was humid, of course. So I said, apologetically, “Well, I’m really sorry, but I’m not going to be able to do anything with this piano.” And he said, “Why not?” I said, “Well, there’s obviously some water damage.” And he replied,
“Water damage? That’s not water damage, that was from the fire!”
As if there was something you could do with this old upright, sinking in the mud, that’s been in a fire and gotten wet! So, that’s an extreme example. But when somebody buys a piano with the best intentions and then they never tune it, they don’t understand that a piano degrades just from not playing it and not servicing it. The piano is going to take a tremendous amount of work to get back to any kind of performance level.
Bob Friedman:
That’s one of the reasons I got into wholesale supply, not supplying the public, but supplying dealers. First of all, there’s only so many people in your public area, unless you’re in a very busy area. I didn’t live in a very busy area. But there are thousands of dealers and hundreds of rebuilders, so everybody always needs stock all the time. So it keeps moving. But the reason I got into it was because I would find myself reconditioning and rebuilding a lot of pianos. And in the end, I really couldn’t get the retail money out of them that I wanted because there weren’t enough people in my area to buy. So, I would wholesale to a dealer somewhere, which meant I was kind of wasting my efforts. Because you know how much work it takes to put a piano back in shape when nobody’s taken care of it. I was giving my work away! And I was saying to myself, “If I’m going to continue to give my work away, I’m not going to earn any money.”
Robert Estrin:
So you found a niche for yourself. You’re one of the only people who really specializes in this. And what’s cool is that you’ve managed to transcend into modern technology and the internet, and I’m sure that helps you tremendously. Hopefully you’re not still moving them yourself!
Bob Friedman:
The heaviest thing I pick up now is either a drumstick or a paintbrush.
Maybe I’ll pick up a tennis racket every now and then when my knees allow. But I’m still finding and buying more than 200 pianos a year.
Robert Estrin:
Wow, that’s impressive! What we do here avoids the whole problem of market area, because we started Living Pianos online piano store back in 2006, before everybody else thought of it. And now of course, it’s the way everybody is buying everything! And because of media and the quality of the internet, if you’ve got decent speakers or headphones, you can actually get a really good preview of a piano. Of course, some players have to play the pianos. And we welcome them to fly in, which some people do. But many people don’t have enough experience with pianos anyway. So they trust their ears and have confidence in what we do.
Bob Friedman:
You play so well, and your recordings are so good, that they’re getting almost exactly what it would sound like in their homes. I’ve listened to your recordings. They don’t sway. The volume is right. The instruments are done right.
Robert Estrin:
I was very lucky to not only grow up in a musical household. My father, Morton Estrin, was a concert pianist, but he also had professional recording equipment in his studio in our home. I always got his hand-me-down tape recorders. And I also attended his recording sessions. So I’ve always had a passion for music technology. It goes hand in hand for me. I also love photography. So it kind of takes all my skill sets and wraps them all up. It’s a blast! I get to meet so many people who love the piano. And now I’m getting back to doing a lot of teaching. As a matter of fact, I’ve got students in Australia, Pakistan, Scotland, Alaska, all over the world! The power of the internet is just so incredible, that I can connect with so many great people who love the piano! So anyway, I want to tell everybody that if you are interested in the piano and want some great stories, check out Bob’s book, The Steinway Hunter. It’s a great read! It’s available at Amazon. And also, can you get it at bookstores as well?
Bob Friedman:
You can get it at Barnes and Noble. You can get it at Walmart. But Amazon is the quick one.
Robert Estrin:
I’ll put some links below so that people can check it out. If you love the piano, you’re going to love this book! I want to thank you for the service you do for the whole industry, as well as a secondary way to piano buyers. Who knows how many of these pianos would end up in the landfill if you didn’t rescue them and find people to restore them.
Bob Friedman:
You just gave me chills, because that’s one of the things that actually got me into this. Because when the phone calls started coming in, when I was running nationwide advertising, I would say, “Are you sure you don’t want to keep it in the family?” They’d say “No, we’re downsizing. And if we don’t donate it, we’re just going to have somebody come and take it to the landfill.” I’d say, “Don’t do that!” So you really feel like you’re not just bringing music to people, but you’re keeping these instruments alive! Especially Steinways. They are really made to last. I say it’s a 300 year piano. Steinways that came out of the 1870s, people are restoring now! So if it lasted that long, that means the next restoration will last that long. We won’t be here, but somebody will want these instruments again.
Robert Estrin:
The pianos will still be around! It’s a little bit of living history. I think about the thousands of pianos that Living Pianos has restored and brought back to life. People will pass those instruments down to future generations, because 99% of pianos aren’t made that way anymore. It’s a lost art, that hand work, and the quality of the wood and all that. Before we go, I think you had a couple of artifacts you wanted to share, is that right?
Bob Friedman:
I actually do. There’s a story in the book called, “62554” about an old Steinway upright. It was in my home for a short time and I ended up selling it. The numbers are my birthdate backwards! And what was interesting, but sad, in that my mother had just passed away and I’d had a trip planned. So I waited a week, but then all these appointments were set up across the country, so I had to get on with it!
It was almost three o’clock in the morning when I finally got to a young gentleman’s house in Cleveland. I opened the piano and I saw the numbers backwards and I looked at him and said, “I know those numbers,” then I realized that it was my birthday backwards!
It was almost like from the piano inside looking out at me.
And it was just after my mother had passed away. Some people think it’s creepy. I don’t, because I brought it home and I actually sold it to a couple, a lawyer and accountant, who had a big church they had just rebuilt. When I described the piano to them they said, “That’s exactly what we’re looking for because everything in the church has this design in it.” So they came and they purchased it. It was an 1870s Steinway upright that had been completely restored before I purchased it. The young gentleman’s father had restored the piano. His father had passed away and he sold it to me. And when I sold this piano, they wanted it badly enough to where the price they gave me helped me with a deposit on the house that I raised my children in! So it actually almost felt like my mother was helping me.
Robert Estrin:
That’s an amazing story!
Bob Friedman:
If you buy the book and read “62554,” you’ll understand that one!
Robert Estrin:
I’ll leave you with one interesting coincidence that we once faced here about 10 years ago. We got two Steinway Model M’s from completely different sources. Both in mahogany. We were living in a live work loft in the Santiago Arts District in Orange County, California at the time. The two pianos were right next to each other. And we were shocked to discover that they were one serial number apart! They must’ve been next to each other on the factory floor!
Bob Friedman:
And they stayed together?
Robert Estrin:
We just happened to get them from two different sources and there they were reunited after about 80 years!
Can you believe that? What are the chances of that?
Bob Friedman:
That was meant for you to be there. And we’ve had many things that were meant for us to be there in this industry.
Robert Estrin:
Absolutely! I hope that all the people who have pianos from you and pianos from us are still playing and enjoying them, and that future generations get to enjoy those pianos! I want to thank you so much, Bob, for coming and joining us here! I encourage everyone to get your wonderful book, The Steinway Hunter!
Bob Friedman:
Thank you Robert.
You can find Bob Friedman’s book, The Steinway Hunter HERE!
For premium videos and exclusive content, you can join my Living Pianos Patreon channel! www.Patreon.com/RobertEstrin
Contact me if you are interested in private lessons. I have many resources for you! Robert@LivingPianos.com
Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. Today we have The Man of 1,000 Steinways, The Steinway Hunter, Bob Friedman! Bob Friedman goes way back in the piano industry and has probably found more Steinways than anybody I know! There are a
Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. Today’s subject is about lead sheets. Lead sheets are what jazz, rock, country, new age, and many other musicians play from. It’s simply the melody line and chord symbols rather than all the notes on the grand staff to be played by both hands. That’s what most working musicians read from, not the full score. As a matter of fact, other than Classical and perhaps Broadway musicals, the vast majority of music is not all written out note for note. The musicians kind of make up their part based upon the chord symbols and the melody line. So you might wonder: Did Classical musicians ever play from lead sheets? The answer is surprisingly, yes! Perhaps it’s a lost art, but let’s look back to the Baroque Era, with composers like Bach, Handel, Telemann, Corelli, and Vivaldi.
In the Baroque era music was written very differently.
With Baroque music, first of all, there were very few dynamics or phrasing indicated in the score. It was mostly just the notes, and that’s about it. Not only that, but you’ll notice ornamentation symbols throughout the score. These are squiggly lines that scholars, centuries later, are still trying to decipher what the composers meant by them. There are volumes of books written about how to approach mordents, trills and turns, as well as other ornamentation. The fact of the matter is, everybody has different ideas about them now. Back then, it’s likely that performers had the freedom to decide how much to embellish the score based upon these ornaments that were in the score. Perhaps they even added ornamentation in places that didn’t have any of these markings. There was a freedom to improvise on the music. But it goes much deeper than that.
Did you know that the trio sonata, which so many composers from Corelli to Telemann wrote hundreds of, were not actually completely written out?
Today, if you buy the sheet music to a trio sonata, it’s all written out. But it wasn’t originally written out. What is a trio sonata? A trio sonata was actually written for a solo instrument. It could be a violin. It could be a flute. It could be any instrument. And a basso continuo, which could be virtually any instrument playing the low part. Perhaps a cello, viola da gamba, something that could play the bass line, which was written out. So you had the melody and the bass written out. Well, what about the keyboard part, the harpsichord, in most cases back then? Was that part written out? No. Now, it wasn’t a lead sheet the way we think of a modern lead sheet. It was what’s called figured bass. Figured bass was a type of lead sheet notation, for lack of a better term.
It did not have the notes. It just had chord symbols (in addition to the melody and bass line). The player had to realize the part based upon those symbols. They were improvising based upon chord changes, just like a jazz musician does today! This is the lost art of improvisation of the Baroque era.
Today when you buy sheet music for a Corelli or Telemann trio sonata it is all written out.
Somebody has gone to the trouble of realizing and writing out a keyboard part from those chord symbols of the figured bass. So almost nobody improvises anymore today. There are some early instrument enthusiasts who actually do this sort of thing. But for the most part, Classical musicians are so used to the sanctity of the score, that they don’t even realize that it wasn’t originally written out! These early works were not written out, except for the melody and the bass. The rest of it was left up to the performer to realize. And even the other parts could be embellished with ornamentation.
This is the truth about Classical music. It was much closer to modern styles of music than most people know. But today we look at it almost like pieces in a museum that you shouldn’t touch. They need to be preserved exactly as they were. But these were living, breathing works of music that evolved depending on who was performing them. So you want to approach Classical music in this way.
Cadenzas were originally improvised, not necessarily written out and learned.
The cadenza was a time for performers to showcase what they could do in the middle of a concerto, taking off on the themes that they had just played. Again, this is all but a lost art. During the Romantic period at salon concerts and informal gatherings, people would make up music going back and forth. They would try to outdo each other. This is what keeps Classical music alive and fresh, that spontaneous element. So while I certainly respect the scores of the great composers and fastidiously learn them, at the same time, you want to understand the lineage where this music comes from. You can add an element of spontaneity and inventiveness to your playing, realizing that these weren’t just static, etched-in-stone works. But they evolved, depending upon who was performing them!
I hope this has been interesting for you! Thanks so much for joining me, Robert Estrin here at LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Resource.
For premium videos and exclusive content, you can join my Living Pianos Patreon channel! www.Patreon.com/RobertEstrin
Contact me if you are interested in private lessons. I have many resources for you! Robert@LivingPianos.com
Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. Today’s subject is about lead sheets. Lead sheets are what jazz, rock, country, new age, and many other musicians play from. It’s simply the melody line and chord symbols rather than a
