…and had to play it all like young horowitz quadruples impressiveness.
It may have been on the sloppy side by 21st century idiotic robot standards but def expressive and human as fuck
The 88s during the Golden age had a softer, more responsive action, right? Is it possible that the finger slips were, in part, a result of that. A soft action gives you the ability to play with more subtlety, but you are also more prone to hit neighboring notes, no?
hard to say, just like with hand size, there are advantages and disadvantages to larger (or smaller) hands, up to a point, imo same with actions in my experience.
Too light (very subjective, based not just on downright but how the piano and acoustic space responds, as well as the speed of the related notes) and it’s harder to control certain things but you get an advantage for stuff requiring endurance. Too heavy (Barere preferred heavier pianos because it tamed in some of his finger stuff) and thicker textures like repeated chords and octs become more difficult until you adjust.
I love how heavy my practice Yamaha, imo, it’s harder to adjust to a heavier piano after practicing on a light piano for months vs the other way around.
At any rate, everyone adjusts eventually and the reason many of the golden age mofos were wikid (and often sheeyat by the idiotic standards by today) wasn’t in the instrument, it was in the training, environment and even audience expectation.
Ziff unleashing sum of da Spanish rapper on a beat up upright.
I do think the custom Horowitz 88 which got pimped out by the 1940’s did allow him to accomplish certain effects more easily but it’s not like he sucked in all those pre-1936 recs on standard pianos LMAO.
Of course with pianists like Yuja and Lola it’s all about the equipment (legs, tits, cock, skirt & hands)
btw I also must add that equipment (size of hall, piano, mics, recorded tech and post processing) DOES have a pretty big impact on recording and the final output because we’re used to a certain standard for modern recs.
Now, here is Horowitz on Scriabin’s shitty beat up Bechstein:
lol one of my fav cinime verite moments snippets of all time was the Scriabin daughter starting to lose her shit and as the camera subtlety pans back to Horowitz it catch the Wanda smile shrewdly. It capture the Wanda ethos perfectly.
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Imo he sounds more natural on normal pianos. The super bright voicing of his custom 88 was great for huge halls but often didn’t record all that smoothly