Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Piano Forum Dark/mellow vs. bright/strident

I can't conceive how that small a difference would mean anything. What definition of sustain where you using to come up with that figure? If you were measuring sustain on the D below middle C, I don't think that's particularly meaningful. In my experience no pianos have a sustain issue that low.

I am lousy at figuring out how good a piano sounds from these sound clips. Too many variables -- the recording setup used, the quality of the monitors connected to my computer ...

They all sound lovely. From what I can hear, I agree with the comment that the Bosendorfer and the Steingraeber sound like the two opposite ends among these. The smaller Bechstein sounds closer to the Steigraeber to me, while the larger one's recording sounds distorted on my computer. Out of these, the Steingraeber is the one that would be my favorite sound, especially, the way the bass / tenor sounds on that piano is a sound that I love. The bosendorfer has the high end shimmer that's also very attractive. My perception only ...

Maybe we have different conception about sound.

PD: This is Natalia d'Obreskoff personal piano , played by Chopin many times its value is about 300.000 U$ dollars. It represents another time, thats why maybe you don't understand it.

I'll just add that it is a LOT easier to build and maintain a piano with a bright, hard sound than to build one which is rich and mellow, in 'focus' without sounding like marshmellows or old wool socks hitting the strings..

the push towards brightness is also because some pianos, when voiced soft sound very, very boring.. having little or no musical-sounding resonances in the soundboard and having hammers made of cheap felt..

I think that to represent that kind of sound this piano came-out better.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?featur...Qn9SlpZAVp3rrGFw&v=iOAzPbdkFio#t=21s

you can't really expect people to understand a Chopin piano if they've played on modern ones all their lives.

mine too, and closer to how pianos were originally built years ago when the designs were created...

the treble, especially in the mid-bass, on that bosendorfer is so strong that it covers-up the harmonic relationships between the fundamentals of the notes..

I could see that piano being useful as a recording piano for pop-rock music

I believe that some people think volume and a percussive sound are the best sound, but harmony suffers as well as play between light and shade.. which is important for making music.. especially classical.

Perhaps this recording of Chopin's Nocturne Op 15 No 3 in G Minor, played on an 1842 Pleyel from the Edwin Beunk Collection, sounds more like Chopin's piano.

Although that piano at least has some sound coming out of it and doesn't sound dead and lifeless, I would still take the sound of many small consumer grade grands over that piano. I am only basing this on what I hear as I cannot take into account tonal problems that really might be recording or performance problems.

For starters there seems to be very little sustain in the treble of that piano even though the piece is not one where poor sustain would usually be evident. I do love the cases of the pianos on these videos. If i could afford it, I would buy one just for the case.

If the piano has a high value I think it's because of its case, historical significance, or because it was played by Chopin and not so much because of its musical qualities.

It's present sound might or might not be like the way Chopin heard it, depending on if it was restored and what work was done on it. The piano sounds like it would be inaudible except in a small living room.

It would be nice to know what Chopin's pianos really sounded like. But I think this is very difficult to know in an accurate way. Of course, we have some idea based on the surviving pianos form his time but (A)if no restoration work is done these piano would generally be in poor condition and (B)if restored I don't think it's easy to know how faithful they are to the original sound. Even if the hammers were somehow exact duplicates of the ones used on pianos of that period, are they voiced the way hammers of that time were voiced? If the soundboard is original, how much has 150+ years changed its impact on the sound?

I think we can perhaps know in an approximate way what Chopin's pianos sounded like. The one's I've heard(not that many)don't have much appeal for me personally.

Withindale: I like very much the recordings of Bart van Oort, anyway would be good to listen to Fadini's restorations in a good recording, because for me the EB Collection fortepianos have some kind of hardness in the hammers that Fadini's one doesn't.

Pianoloverus

Ofcourse, the price of that pianino is because of the historical value, but let me know you the prices of PaulMcNulty Replicas:

CC - f4 after I.Pleyel op.1555, 1830 : 120.000 € ( 156.3840 U$)

AAA - a4 after Boisselot 1846 op.2800 : 147.000 € ( 191.5704 U$ )

Is really impossible to keep in the market with this prices, there are pianos of another times but the sound produced is in my opinion a better approach than the tipical modern piano wich is built in order to fit the market demands (A multyuse instrument able for playing everything, jazz, rock , classical, romantic) this is nosense and looses the quality of a particular kind of music. This is in my opinion incorrect. If you as a costumer think that modern pianos sounds better or more adequate wouldn't it be because you listened always that way , not because some people (composers etc) decided it sound 'better' but because it fits all the market necesities?

We are going OT here, but this Chopin Rondo played on an 1826 Graf fortepiano could be a better representative of the actual sound of instruments of the day.

From the notes I've read Chopin seems to have preferred mellow to bright, and he did not much like the Broadwoods he played in England and Scotland in 1848.

All of these pianos sound very beautiful, but comparing one to another is not an easy task: different songs, different size pianos, possibly different mike setup? Since none of these songs offered a variety of dynamics, really loud, really fast, whatever, it is also hard to determine if they become strident upon fierce playing. Still, I would not be unhappy owning any of them. To me, they all sound like they have a fairly complex tone range and none of them were overly bright. Mellow? Maybe because the songs were fairly mellow, they all sounded a bit mellow to me. Symantics. On another post I heard piano comparisons and liked the Steingraeber and Sons best, but on this set, I couldn't choose between it and the Bosie. The Bechsteins were ok, but would have liked to hear a C. Bechstein instead of two Academy models. I think we spin our wheels doing this. In person one might hear things better anyway. Fun topic, though.

The comment about the Pleyel video being dead and lifeless doesn't seem right to me. Understand that rebuilding or restoring these pianos is nearly impossible without changing their very nature since the materials needed cannot be had. I read a long, informative post about the problem a while back. You can probably find it if you do a search here. In that piano's early days it probably sounded very different, but even if it doesn't project like a grand or a bigger upright, I thought it was very sweet. The tone is a little hollow and certainly it was intended only for performance in small room groups (I have read that Chopin preferred an upright and usually only performed in small salons for friends and students--this piano would appeal to him.) I was blown away by how well this 170 year old piano played. The performer was very capable and I enjoyed the music. Would it sound more robust on a Bosie Imperial? Sure, but there is room in my world for both.

I agree that this 1839 grand has more sound projection and a brighter tone than the upright posted earlier. Again, small upright, larger grand, probably different restoration materials, and so on. Is this what Chopin would have heard if he played it in 1839? Who knows? Nice piano, though, whether it sounds authentic, or not.

Very nice sounding piano. However, again, we do not know what materials were used to restore this, how it was voiced, miked, etc. I seriously doubt that they would have been happy using a weak-sounding piano on a cd recording, so I suspect the piano was worked over quite a bit. They cannot assume their listeners are well-informed PW posters. The average person goes away with the impression that pianos in Chopin's time sounded almost exactly the same as modern ones. I don't think so.

IMO, references to the European sound are pretty much meaningless, used mostly (and mistakenly) as a verbal counterpoint to the perceived shortcomings of the Asian sound. In reality, some of the brightest purest most-forward sounds to come out of new pianos come from some high-priced European pianos -- Hamburg Steinway being a leader who some others either consciously or subconsciously seem to emulate.

In listening to your samples, it seemed to my ears that the main difference among your linked pianos was in the attack: the percussive edge. In that respect, your Steingraeber sample sounded to my ears as if some of irs edge had been intentionally taken off (at least compared to the very few Steingraeger pianos I've heard live and played).

Listening a second time, I was reminded of something Michael Spreeman (designer of the Ravenscroft piano) posted here a while back. I'll quote Mr. Spreeman here.



Mr. Spreeman went on to say....

I know well the materials and procedures used for both restorations because the person who restored that piano is a good friend and all I know is that he has been investigating for many years and the research is absolutly rigorous.

Ofcourse, the research is not yet finished (Maybe it will never end...) But all I know is that many old fortepianos have been explored, also documents and other stuff that helped to obtain a very very similar material for the hammers.

It's impossible to know whether I like the sound of a modern piano better mostly because I am more used to it or mostly because I find it inherently superior. My feeling is that no matter how much I'd listen to pianos like the ones posted on this thread...no matter how much more I became accustomed to their tone....I would still far prefer the sound of a modern piano.

Do you know what restoration work, if any, was done on that particular piano? If not, I don't see how one could have any idea how close it sounded to Chopin's piano?