yes indeed, i would certainly trust andre's ear, highly trained and discerning, over what was obviously a poor quality recording.
and norbert -- shame on you. suggesting that a yamaha, played by the likes of richter and gould, is a lesser quality instrument than a euro or american instrument. if andre had been playing a chinese piano i'm sure your comments would have been quite different. nice try, but an epic fail nonetheless.
I believe Entheo makes a valid point. In the end, most of us have a "vested interest" even if it's only psychological. For example, when a person has spent a lot of money on a piano they're likely to defend it, not wanting to feel they've goofed. Perhaps I'm doing it myself right now! These vested interests, whether monetary or psychological, can unfortunately spin our comments.
And yet, if there is one PW contributor who in my mind stands out as defending his vested interests in a way most likely to possibly distort what might be pereceived without those special interests, I believe it to be Norbert, with his frequent cutting of Japanese pianos (sometimes subtle, sometimes not so subtle) and his tiresome defence of Chinese pianos.
Norbert makes money when one of his Chinese pianos sells. When someone in his local market chooses a Japanese piano instead, it translates into business he has lost. Does anyone really think this could not affect his perception?
Perhaps the least spin coming from anyone, at least in my view, comes from Larry Fine. I think he has bent over backward to be fair-minded in his assessments (and he's no great lover of the piano I chose). His assessment shows that despite the remarkable improvement Chinese pianos have made, as yet, not even one has made it into any of his performance grades or his professional grade (
http://www.pianobuyer.com/fall11/44.html).
If current trends continue, it seems likely that there will come a time when Chinese pianos will have gone beyond being "the best deal" to being of high enough quality to get into Fine's top categories. However, none of us is in a position to buy a 2015 Hailun or Pearl River. If we're buying today, we must choose what's available today. If we're hunting for the best deal, it has become almost unquestionably Chinese. If we're hunting for one of the best pianos, for the moment that remains an entirely different story. Cutting at a C2 when you're sellilng Ritmullers should be, as Entheo suggests, a shameful position to take.
but they know what they were doing... I tryed the piano with no amplification process and there wasn`T much of a difference because the amplification wasn´t that loud too... Sometimes amplification can really disturb the real sound of piano but to me it wasn`t too diferent in this case... Sometimes can be a real catastrofe... 