Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Piano Forum Some Pianos "Easier" to Play than Others?

I have heard it said that some pianos are "easier" to play than others. I have heard it said, for instance, that a Steinway is more forgiving of mistakes than a Bosendorfer. I was told by a world class pianist that the Fazioli is somehow "easier" to play than some other brands. Does anyone have an opinion about this, and what exactly would be "easier" ?

Probably has a lot to do with regulation.

"Easier" could easily mean different things to different people. Some peope equate "easier" with "lighter". While I think a well regulated piano is easier to play, there was a long thread where some people felt a well regulated piano was less forgiving.

I don't think the person who said Steinways are easier to play than Boesendorfers was referring to regulation. That would imply that Steinways were consistently better(or worse)regulated than Boesendorfers which, of course, isn't true.

My impression was that the speaker was saying that the Steinway tone was somehow more forgiving of mistakes than the Bosendorfer and therefore more suitable for a less proficient player.

When you say "mistakes," I assume you're referring to dynamics and not notes. After all, a wrong note is a wrong note regardless of the piano being played.

So then, what affects the pianists ability to control dynamics? Everything between the pianists fingers and the notes being played - scale design, action design, action regulation, key weighting, voicing etc. So then, does a Bosendorfer require greater proficiency than a Steinway (or any other quality piano)? I don't know that we can generalize to that extent. Certainly differences between individual pianos do exist and one pianist's set up preferences may be totally unsuitable to another pianist. There are just far too many variables that come into play.

What this person is referring to has nothing to do with regulation. Certain pianos are in fact more forgiving than others. NY Steinway is more forgiving, easier to play, than Hamburg Steinway. It has a warmer tone, with a greater emphasis on the harmonics than the fundamental, when compared to European instruments. The German Steinway, most pianists agree, can create a wider range of colours.
Other European pianos with a strong fundamental and less harmonics (a 'clean' sound), such as Bechstein, Bluether, and Bosendorfer, are also 'harder to play' (again, we're not talking about the action, but the instrument as a whole).

Fazioli is incredibly easy to play. I don't know why. It just is. This might contradict what I have said before, but it is what I have found in my own experience as a pianist.


It should be noted that many pianists have a preference for NY Steinway-Sergei Rachmaninoff (also loved Bechstein) and Anton Kuerti, among others.

radaddict,
A mistake is a mistake regardless of the piano you are playing. Some instruments, in particular the American pianos, seem to be more forgiving of slight mistouches than others.
The greater 'rumble' (harmonics) in NY Steinway and M & H probably makes it ever-so-slightly more difficult for the audience to pick out the occasional wrong note in the bass.

Instruments with a 'cleaner' sound seem to leave the pianist much more exposed. This is a double-edged sword-it means [in some pianist's opinions] a greater range of colours available, but also a more difficult instrument to play well.

Interesting perspective. You are talking about audience perception of a performance as compared to the pianists perception. Yes, I can see how "mistouches" in the bass could be masked by the harmonic content of other notes played. The question I would raise then; is that particular piano easier to play, or easier to listen to? To answer my own question, I would say both. The pianist finds the piano easier to play because he/she does not need to be as precise. The audience finds it easier to listen to because they may not notice an imprecise performance and therefore, find the performance good when in fact it was mediocre.

This being the case, I would recommend that concert pianist practice on a Bosendorfer and perform on a Steinway.

My teacher's old Hamburg model S is the world's easiest playing piano. It has a strong singing treble combined with an ultralight action because of hammers that have been worn down nearly to the wood over years of hard use and filing.

I don't think this is the kind of easy you had in mind, but my point is that a live soundboard combined with a light action and perfect regulation is what makes a piano easy to play. These characteristics can be present or not present in any make of piano. Generalizations about easy playing piano brands are not so useful for a typical piano shopper who can only buy one instrument at a time.

Well, my son was playing on a relative's neglected grand last night and after a minute he whispered to me, "I hate this piano!" I think it would qualify as HARD to play so an easy to play piano would be the opposite. Three major keys would stick, so every time they were played he had to get his finger under the front and flick them up so that they would play when they were needed again. The some keys had to be pressed harder than others to make the same volume of sound. And it sounded tinny and none of the pedals worked at all.

I have found that dropped notes in chords are not necessarily noticed by the performer or audience if the piano is a Steinway because the harmonics are so rich you can almost hear the dropped note in the overtones. This is much harder to get away with on Bosendorfers or Faziolis, where you just have to be more careful. On the other hand, on these instruments you can hear the music exactly as the composer intended, especially for Nineteenth century music. Beethoven simply sounds better on these instruments because of the clarity.

In this respect, therefore, the tone of the Steinway is more forgiving of errors (dropped notes, not necessarily wrong notes), whereas with many European grands you have to be precise.

The advantage of these Europeans grands, though, lies with the action. A lot of them arrive in the dealer's showroom with excellent preparation. The action is light but controllable, the springs have sufficient bounce and repetition, the hammers are aligned perfectly, and the weight of the hammers, dampers, and keys is carefully aligned and even across the keyboard. Of all of these models, none is so consistent and performer-friendly as the Fazioli. There are no mediocre Faziolis, and they are the only instrument that can uniformly allow an accomplished amateur to play like a professional very quickly (and I've played over a dozen of them).

Other high end grands aim for the same result, including Steingraeber, Schimmel NWS, and Kawai with their artisan prep program. As far as I can tell, though, Steingraeber is the only one that comes close to the excellence of Fazioli pianos, and both of these companies have a limited production so it is probably a lot easier for them to exercise quality control.

I think this explains why certain instruments have a high reputation for ease of play - they will all be easy to play no matter what showroom you visit. Steinway, on the other hand, is hit or miss, depending on how much if any the dealer has chosen to invest in regulation. Apparently it is not much, because the general public isn't aware of the difference good preparation can make, and the pianos seem therefore to sell themselves whatever condition they are in.

Any top end piano can be very easy to play with proper preparation, and obviously when a Steinway D gets to a concert stage it has been prepped to the point that its action is world class. The point I am making is that some manufacturers have better factory and dealer prep, and since all their pianos are in top form, the manufacturers will therefore get a reputation for ease of play that others will never enjoy.

It's just the opposite : NY Steinway is regarded as more colorful than the Hamburg S&S (and most European makes) in general. The greater harmonics allow for this greater color potential as do the softer hammers .

Exactly right.

Posted by JustAnotherPianist:
My sentiments exactly.

...just a quick correction. A warmer tone indicates fewer harmonics. The fundamental is the lowest frequency component of any musical tone. A piano note consisting of only the fundamental would sound incredibly mellow and dull. Adding harmonics to the fundamental creates brightness and interest to the tone, although too much power in the harmonics as compared to the fundamental will create a tone perceived as overly bright and potentially harsh.

I'm not trying to be pedantic, but think that without a common understanding and terminology, communication is almost impossible.

Would you then say that the Yamaha tone emphasizes the harmonics more so than the mellower tone of say, the Kawai and some European pianos?

[/qb][/QUOTE]It's just the opposite : NY Steinway is regarded as more colorful than the Hamburg S&S (and most European makes) in general. The greater harmonics allow for this greater color potential as do the softer hammers . [/QB][/QUOTE]


:rolleyes:

Um, what? You're the one who's got it backwards.

Hamburgs sound clearer due to the Renner hammers.

Yes.

Most pianists agree that greater clarity of European instruments, in particular Hamburg Steinway, offers a wider range of tonal possibilities at the expense of that lovely warmth found in NY Steinways.

You can't have your cake and eat it too.

There's a reason Hamburg Steinways are more popular EVERYWHERE outside of the USA.

Obviously some NY Steinway owners will defend their pianos to the death and claim that they have the widest colour range of the whole lot.

Personally I love NY Steinways-my favourite D happens to be American. I love its warmth and complexity of sound. But there are more colours available to the highly skilled pianist on an instrument with the harder, more compressed felt found in heat-pressed hammers. Cold-pressed felt subsequently treated with lacquer produces wonderfully warm and rich tone that many people go crazy for, but it is slightly more limited in the absolute tonal range that it can create.

It's not the other way around.

We had two Steinways on the stage in the concert hall when I was studying at the university - an older one and a new one. All the piano students HATED the new one and always preferred to play on the old one. This was a matter of regulation and voicing. Steinways cannot EVER be said to be easier or more forgiving in general because they are incredibly inconsistent pianos and no two of a particular model are alike. With proper regulation and voicing, a Steinway can be made to be a real peach and a piano that someone loves to play, whether she/he makes mistakes or not. But these two theoretically identical pianos were like night and day.