How often does concert pianist tune their pianos?

[johnmar78]

Hi folks, just doing a survey, can some professional/concert pianist tell us how often do you tune your piano? eg 3 times a year? once a week during concert period? Thanks

[j_menz]

Concert pianists spend quite a bit of time on the road, so "their" piano for much of that time is whatever they can manage to get hold of.  In days of yore (and possibly still) some travelled with their own tech; otherwise the larger halls have a tech in residence to tune /voice the piano to the performeres requirements.  You might find this insightful (and rather amusing):

https://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/culture/stephenhough/100066407/an-obsession-and-a-viscous-circle/

[outin]

^ How appropriate for you to be the one to answer this one

[rachmaninoff_forever]

Of course Menz is the first person to answer this...

[hfmadopter]

I don't know about other concert pianists or how they operate these days but Horowitz took both his piano and tech with him. You can find Youtube videos of one such excursion where they interview his Tech stage side. They moved the piano from his livingroom in NY and transported it to Europe, the tech did a pre install tuning then they hoisted the piano on stage where he tuned it again. I imagine in most cases if it's a two day show it gets tuned before each show for anyone pro level. Horowitz only played his own Steinway tuned by his own tech, voiced to his own liking.

Locally we had ourselves a star pianists named Ken Manzer who did some classical and Chopinesque pop make overs in his own club. I can remember him during a break touching up the strings himself. That's when I got the idea, if he can do that so can I between tunings in my own livingroom ( forget the entertaining part, he was in another league) and so it began that I learned to tune my piano, FWIW.

[johnmar78]

thansk guys, Hfma, yes tuning your own paino is a very handy indeed. This is waht I expect fro Horiwize=, at real time tuning at the events.  . I suppose, shopuld be tuned jsut before the concert.