Chris Bonds weighs in:

>Allow me as a non-pianist (but one who can play the piano some) to offer
>a skeptical view.  It should be obvious that the only effect a pianist
>can have on a key is control of velocity, the speed with which the key is
>pushed down . . . (usw.)

I've been playing the piano for 35 years, have gotten three degrees in the
process, have read Otto Ortmann's _The Physiological Mechanics of Piano
Technique_, and Reginald Gerig's _Great Pianists and Their Technique_ (in
fact, I'm typing this in Reg's old teaching studio), and talked to most of
my friends and enemies in the profession about all of this, and I'm still
not sure that I can explain how we do it.  Chris's explanation sounds
rational to me, but I think that there is a definite difference between
"how" we do it (understood analytically) and "how" we do it (understood
experientially).  While quasi-scientific understanding of instrumental and
anatomical mechanics can't hurt, given that there are so many certifiably
wrong ways to approach the instrument, much of what makes a pianist's
tone uniquely his or her own comes from that terribly unscientific and
unmeasurable place we call "within." One hears great pianists, and other
musicians for that matter, and forms a preference for certain kinds of
sound.  I grew up preferring Rubinstein's sound to Horowitz's, the Guarneri
Quartet to the Juilliard, and kept trying to find those sounds when I sat
down to play.  One also becomes keenly aware of the limitations of the
piano.  We try to hide from everybody the fact that it's a percussion
instrument, whose individual sounds immediately and irrevocably start to
decay almost as soon as they are made.  If we come into contact with the
principles of good singing (which we should but often don't) we understand
how notes connect one to another, and what happens between them; we then
try to create the illusion of making these things happen at the piano.  All
of this desire to create illusions and defy the nature of the instrument
itself leads to the necessity for imagination and experimentation,
qualities which are always necessary as one goes from Steinway to Yamaha
to Graf and Streicher to upright to grand and back again.  Each individual
instrument creates its own new set of demands on us.  Of course, all of
this experimentation will lead us to try various shades of pedal (damper,
sostenuto, una corda, and moderator when available) and to work with
various degrees of legato and non-legato touch.  Has anyone mentioned one
of the neglected aspects of piano sound that harpsichordists and organists
tend to understand better than we do -- the matter of how to release the
key?

I've been rambling terribly, but at least to me, this is a topic which
doesn't exactly lend itself to precision and brevity.  One more thing:
Steve Schwartz made gracious mention of my work in a post on this subject
a day or two ago.  (Thanks to Mimi Ezust for bringing it to my attention.)
Writing about my performance of one of his pieces, he said:  "I realized
that his technique opened up a range of choices simply unavailable and
mostly inconceivable to me." While it is possible to find redeeming
qualities in almost any piece of music, I find that it's hard to react to
something that's not there already.  If a composer writes a good piece of
music, as Steve certainly did in his little miniature for Chuck Long, the
quality of the thing sparks a performer's imagination just as much as does
a fine instrument, or a remembered or sought-for sound-world.

DPHorn, cramming for a Monday night solo recital.