Cinema &Music Entropy | 21 Aug 2010
Steinway’s Master Tuner
” I sense that the instrument is alive – that when I listen closely for nuance and tone, the inanimate world of strings, wood, pins and steel comes to life. When I honor the piano’s vitality and complexity, I can’t tell whether I am playing the piano or it is playing me.” –Michael Jones
A documentary following Steinway’s Master Tuner
Pianomania is a film about love, perfection and a little bit of madness.
” The tone isn’t breathing.” – complains pianist Pierre-Laurent Aimard, distraught. This is a typical sentence in Steinway & Sons’ chief technician and Master Tuner Stefan Knüpfer’s normal work day. Each piano has its own personality, each piece demands its own timbre, and every interpretation has a particular temperament.
For Stefan Knüpfer, achieving the perfect tone is all-consuming. Unsurprising when your clients include Pierre-Laurent Aimard, Lang Lang and Alfred Brendel. For Knüpfer is Steinway’s Master Tuner in Vienna, and as such, is responsible for maintaining Steinway’s reputation for superior sound – and where appropriate altering that sound to suit the exacting requirements of the world’s leading pianists.
The documentary Pianomania, charts a year in the world of Knüpfer. Central to the story are his efforts to achieve multiple tones – through some highly inventive means – for Aimard’s 2008 DG recording of Bach’s Art of Fugue. It’s a long, difficult and at times painful process – witness Knüpfer’s crushing disappointment when his specially designed panels to give the piano a more organ-like sound are abandoned during the recording sessions – yet one that clearly gives much joy and satisfaction. When Aimard finally turns to the Master Tuner with the words “Stefan, I have always dreamt of this sound,” one might well shed a tear.
Pivotal to Pianomania, though, is the quiet charm and enthusiasm of its protagonist. Clearly a great talent in his own right, Knüpfer is happy to remain behind the scenes – as he puts it, “to disappear offstage when the audience enters”. Musician, craftsman, scientist and wry observer – “pianists are mostly dissatisfied” – his passion alone could easily sell the subject matter. But the chance, too, to see leading pianists behind the scenes is not to be missed.
Pianomania takes the viewer along on a humorous journey into the secret world of sounds, and accompanies Stefan Knüpfer at his unusual job with world famous pianists like Lang Lang, Alfred Brendel, Rudolf Buchbinder and Pierre-Laurent Aimand, among others. To find the right instrument with the necessary qualities, compatible with the vision of the virtuoso, to tune it to perfection and finally to get it on the stage, needs nerves of steel, boundless passion, and the extraordinary competence in translating words into sounds.
Directors Robert Cibis and Lilian Franck have taken great care to ensure audiences can appreciate the fine alterations in tonal quality. The film was shot in high definition and in Dolby surround sound on 90 separate tracks, a process which allows the audience to experience in some part Knüpfer’s superhuman aural abilities – at least for the duration of the film.
Refer Pianomania documentary site here
on 21 Aug 2010 at 6:52 pm 1.Marie said …
“Translating words into sounds” and Translating images into sounds too.
A story in black and white (some pianos have the colours of the keys reversed), ebony and ivory and already a poem by itself just with 2 words/sounds/ and imagination goes and run, fly, escape, sing, dance, shout, cry, almost die, and suddenly resurrect..
la pluie.. the rain, une goutte, one drop or many like in Chopin’s Prelude No.15
Un jardin sous la pluie from Debussy while looking at Sisley or Boudin’s paintings .
Reaching heights as we never imagine to go, thanks to L. Einaudi inviting us to fly,
seeing “forbidden colours” in Merry Christmas Mr lawrence with R. Sakamoto, imagining a lover reading the poem of Leconte de Lisle “la fille aux cheveux de lin” (the girl with flaxen hair) musically written by Debussy,
floating while listening to Rick Wright and Pink Floyd,
or listening to R. Blechacz and almost being convinced that it’s Chopin himself playing
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ECdO9e0cftQ
My opinion is a piano can be compared to a woman, precious, fragile but strong, and when an artist bring it/her to life then.. if Once You’ve Been In Love… with piano.. this love will never leave you
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aT4rnF3et0Q
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bLtpeaFh-YY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ECdO9e0cftQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAVZPd4rnNM
I love you piano
Thanks Ajay for this marvelous post
on 24 Aug 2010 at 9:43 am 2.Entropy said …
Dear Marie
Thanks for your enlightening comment and sharing your thoughts..
If the listener is left intellectually and emotionally moved, but with more questions than answers, that for me is the sign of a good performance of this endlessly fascinating work. Aimard’s reading does just that
Pierre-Laurent Aimard- Bach: The Art of Fugue
http://www.musicalcriticism.com/recordings/cd-aimard-bach-0108.shtml