How much can a piano take?

Saturday night I went to the Huntsville Symphony. In its two most recent concerts, the symphony has sounded very good, and with a guest conductor (and pianist) this past week, I was mildly intrigued to hear how they would sound under a different maestro's baton. They started off with a Schumann symphony, which was a little bland, but executed well enough. After intermission came a Stravinsky piece, which was certainly different from anything I'd heard in a while (as Stravinsky usually is). Then came a Grieg piano concerto featuring Anne-Marie McDermott on piano. Although Mrs. S. and I have balcony seats in the center, second row (far from the stage), I also have an excellent pair of binoculars, a relic of my days as a horse race handicapper/writer. With those binoculars, we can usually get a fairly decent view of just about anything we want to see on stage. So I watched Ms. McDermott pretty closely for most of her performance.

Of course, she was playing a Steinway, and she was really having at it. The Grieg piece had a lot of up and down movement, and a lot of low register accents to drive and fill out the high register arpeggios and scales. These require the pianist to (BUM!) bash the left hand down, then (Be-da-da-duh, Be-da-da-duh...) quickly bring both hands to the upper register to thump some high accent notes before immediately rushing down the keyboard in a frenzy, then BUM, Be-da-da-duh, Be-da-da-duh, BUM, Be-da-da-duh, Be-da-da-duh, over and over again, for about fifteen minutes. It was as physically demanding a performance as it was musically interesting.

Then I got to thinking. A Steinway & Sons grand has no trouble standing up to this kind of incessant, harried, (essentially) uncontrolled pounding, and indeed, the Huntsville Symphony's Steinway grand sounded, well, grand, while succumbing to Ms. McDermott's relentless attacks and beatings. While I watched, I thought about my serviceable, but modest Yamaha P-70 at home. While it sounds good and has true piano feel and response, it is clunky at the best of times and is basic in construction and performance. It occurred to me that if Ms. McDermott were to play the Grieg piece on my piano, she could only play it once or twice before she completely beat the piano into submission. As I watched her play the Steinway, I kept mentally projecting the P-70 beneath her hands, and all I could envision were keys flying and plastic housings cracking, red felt pads popping out the bottom and sides, and electronic circuit boards splintering and sparking into oblivion. I mean, every once in a while, when I'm practicing and I get frustrated, I'm apt to bang on the keyboard, or get rough in my playing just to let out some frustration, whereupon I sense the keyboard's delicacy and allow the guilt to force me pull my punches and stop. I know one day, if I don't control myself, one or more of those keys are going to go down, and not get back up again. Ever. I'll really feel bad on that day.

Maybe I just need a Steinway, so I can beat the hell out of it once in a while.

Maybe not.

As I do after every live performance I attend, I buckled down and practiced yesterday. I never bashed my keyboard once, not even while mutilating a stride exercise or disgracing Falling Grace by playing too fast.

Tomorrow (or maybe Wednesday), a long overdue addition to the Yoity Tot list.