"IN SEARCH OF THE PERFECT SOUND" "KONZERTHAUS, VIENNA" "We are looking for the heavy bench." "The soundless one ..." "Now?" "Now." "Lang Lang is rehearsing in Schubert Hall." "That's so stupid, you never know where they are." "Could we look in there maybe?" "Not here either ..." "This can't be." "Normally, in the large hall ..." "Mozart Hall." "That's a possibility." "But I don't think so." "Yes!" "I can't believe it!" "I would never have looked there." "Let's do it together." "Oh, it's all right." "This is the Ferrari of the Konzerthaus." "This one in the last room!" "That's strange." "We always have them in the passageway." "Up here?" "Yes, in the large hall, in the Mozart Hall." "Well then, thank you." "You're welcome." "The other one too." "Thank you." "I urgently need the 245 on the empty stage in Mozart Hall." "The pianist wants to play." "Can you please do it?" "Thanks, goodbye." "A classic mistake." "They thought it's only for tuning and left the piano down in the hall." "All grand pianos bear a production number." "I suggested the 245 to Pierre-Laurent Aimard for the Bach recordings." "They only will take place in one year but we want to start to prepare them now." "Because Pierre-Laurent demands very diverse sounds for each piece from the same instrument." "We've never done that before." "ONE YEAR PRIOR TO THE BACH RECORDINGS" "Yes, very interesting." "The action is very pleasant." "Totally controllable and very easy." "That'll be perfect for the harpsichord-like pieces." "For the organ-like or choral-like ... one needs a kind of ..." ""deeper expression."" "Then I would need an ... echo." "Because it's really like a clavichord." "We have to define that." "Should the sound do this or should the sound do this?" "Should the tone be ... like this?" "I would like to have both." "Fine, I need an open tone like that anyway." "But in this context?" "But in this context ... more intimate." "A bit more intimate." "It has a very light ..." "Yes." "Exactly!" "The others are clean in comparison." "The G for example, totally ..." "Yes, exactly." "That's good." "It has to be prepared with much care." "If we were, for example, to take two hours ... in April, in which I would bring all the pieces ... and play a little from each." "So as to hear the tone ..." "A dress rehearsal." "But we need two, three hours for that." "For sure." "What do we call that?" "So that we understand each other." ""Vibrato", or something like that?" "We'll call it the "clavichord-situation."" "The first was a pure "harpsichord-situation."" "That was the very first that we heard?" "These are the four large families:" "We have an "organ-situation" ... and then the "chamber-situation" ... and an "ensemble-situation" at the beginning, probably." "It's quite possible that we have to record something by Carter." "In April?" "In September." "September?" "Okay." "A toccata, that's the piece he surprisingly composed for me, you know?" "And ... that would be recorded at the same time." "I am going to abduct you today." "To the workshop." "We are going to try it out on our instruments, the ones being repaired." "We have the same problems." "New strings have to be freed." "We're going to try our repaired sounding boards with these chips." "With these wooden strips that you saw over there." "It's not balanced yet." "And we're trying to make it work with these instruments." "If you want more pressure, you can put it a little further down." "But you are already hearing what happened." "Exciting, isn't it?" "Or crazy?" "I had a really terrible dream." "I dreamt that a string tore exactly in the area where I am now." "I am only saying this ... in case it happens right now." "He closes his eyes, plays and is unapproachable." "When you say we have to start admitting people, he keeps playing." "You can't just carry him out." "FRANZ LISTZ, HUNGARIAN RHAPSODY No, 6" "HOFBURG, VIENNA" "Aimard, who's recording "The Art of the Fugue", wants to have various tones ... with the idea, the flavour of other instruments." "They shouldn't sound like them, but they should ... impart to the listener the intent of what Bach may have thought." "He also said organ and chamber music." "I said I can relate to that." "But what is difficult for me are clavichord and harpsichord." "I'm too inexperienced for that." "The clavichord has a consistent overtone construction." "I claim or believe that this consistent overtone construction ... is what goes directly into the soul via the ear." "This spinet was made exactly 400 years ago, in 1608." "Alone the fact that a 400 year old instrument still plays so directly ... and with a certain power ... doesn't leave me totally cold." "The modern concert piano is a fascinating music machine." "There is no alternative for a large hall with 4000 people." "But volume is always combined with a loss of colour." "We totally agree on this point." "A machine that is so aggressive ... that I can't even draw the string that makes it sing ... without bloodying myself ... a thing that requires three people to be transported." "It has developed a certain inhuman dimension for me." "But it is almost dependency, isn't it?" "Pianists depend on really good instruments." "I think so." "Some pianists aren't that concerned with the instrument ... which I find very strange." "Sure." "It's like a singer's voice." "It is our instrument." "One also has to be very critical as a pianist ... and seek contact with good technicians." "And constantly work on it." "You can't tune it one time and voice it, you have to work on it continuously." "I had to explain what we are looking for." "Luckily, Mr. Fellner agreed ... to help me a little and to give me some security." "You still don't exactly know what we are searching for." "We are selecting ... a D grand piano, a concert grand, for the Konzerthaus." "Sufficient for the large hall, but for people who like a powerful instrument that can also be played in the Mozart Hall." "It has to be very sonorous and, most of all, it must have colours." "This one here and that fourth one." "I had these two grands on the short list." "I didn't choose any of those." "I left open the fifth, but I selected the first one ... precisely because in its present condition it seems powerful." "I have the feeling that something, some substance, is already there." "Although it seems to be somewhat superficially brilliant now." "A great deal would have to be done." "The resonance is there, but the sound is still not round." "It is still thin." "It's more beautiful here." "For sure." "The other grand, which has an unbelievable amount of ..." "I wouldn't say it is wiry, but, well, force ... it is slimmer than this grand." "Of that I am sure." "And I would also like to have ... an alternative for a soloist in the large hall." "It was hard, but in the end we chose the 780." "I am relieved, because our 109 will probably be sent to Australia, and I want the new grand as an alternative for the Bach recordings." "The pressure is intense." "One always wants to make recordings for posterity." "At least artists like Pierre-Laurent Aimard." "He generally receives some kind of award for his recordings." "So, it could be that he says, wonderful and great ... but it could also be that he says:" ""Yes, that's wonderful and great, but ..."" "His favourite word is always "Question"." "So, when he says "That's wonderful!"" ""Question." Then I have to be careful." "And it gets interesting because ... in general, what he then wants is not easy to achieve." "SIX MONTHS PRIOR TO THE FIRST BACH RECORDINGS" "Isn't it crazy?" "This idea is really crazy." "I'm putting the felt in between." "That should actually fit there." "For the changeover..." "A little too sharp." "Has to go back a bit." "Okay, that's good." "It has to be used like that." "Just try it." "Do you need a music stand?" "Yes please." "That's a jeu de luth." "That would be a kind of lute piano?" ""Lute register" on the harpsichord." "A question!" "I'm sorry." "The character of the tone." "Would it be okay if it wasn't muted?" "Not totally, to be honest." "Then it isn't good." "I'll take it out." "This isn't about the sound being rounder, or should it be rounder?" "I think so, yes." "He no longer speaks about variety and sound, but only about temporal moments in the sound." "Can you imagine that?" "This tuning of the harpsichord was pretty heavy." "Very complicated." "But tomorrow I'll do a little more." "Then it should actually be fine." "We developed this sound reflector with Pierre-Laurent ... to improve the piano's sound in concerts with an orchestra." "And we can adjust the instrument to meet the requirements of a given concert hall." "Now we are going to use it for the first time." "Now we are going to open this thing." "Let's see if this creates absolute chaos." "Or simply less sound." "That, of course ... wouldn't be bad ... if we had less sound." "One can now clearly hear ... that sound is there, but here ... there is nothing." "That's because, when you look up there ... the slats under the ceiling are angular." "That was the reason why we invented these slats." "I thought I could do this the way it was planned." "The front one, whose frequencies don't reach the ceiling ... will be reflected directly into the hall." "I'm going to try it out." "Wonderful." "Very interesting!" "For the rehearsal?" "No, for the concert." "We'll try that later." "The question is how it sounds with the orchestra." "That means, we have one direction only for the descant." "Everything else is far too much." "So imposing." "And thus the distance is lengthened." "But not lengthened too much." "Then that goes there, and there, and there ..." "Now it's less in the hall." "And how is the instrument?" "Listen to it." "109?" "The 109, yes." "But perhaps we'll have a look later." "Yes, it's better in the intermission." "WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART PIANO CONCERT No, 13" "If this grand piano is really going to be sold, I won't be happy." "I think that no pianist will be happy about it." "But ... the way it sounds, he likes this grand piano." "It sounds beautiful." "He is looking for the sound of this piano." "You can hear that immediately." "Even on this monitor." "That was obvious." "They're talking about the transport to Melbourne." "He wants us to bring it right to the house, not just to the airport." "Which is probably better." "The piano movers in Melbourne are not particularly well organised." "I must admit, I'm a little melancholic." "That was pretty strange." "I just thought about all the places this piano had been and who played on it." "It's a long time, isn't it?" "2001." "I told Pierre-Laurent, he didn't believe me." "That the piano will be sold?" "That was at his last concert." "He was totally euphoric after that concert." "I said: "I have to tell you something, you played on it for the last time."" "His jaw dropped." "He said:" ""But I have recordings."" "I said: "No, they're on a different grand." He said: "I'm recording in January."" "Then I said: "But not on that grand piano"." "I thought that he was going to die." "That was really sad." "Oh well, but now we have to see ... that this one gets there." "I hope that this grand can do even more than the other." "I mean, they are sold from time to time ... to people who are looking for something special." "Stefan, I wish lots of success." "Maybe we'll see each other in a moment." "Impossible!" "This is awful!" "Knüpfer once again." "I have a problem." "I am installing new hammer heads into a D grand at the Konzerthaus ... and discovered they're too narrow." "They've been slurred." "Herr Pupsch, are you in the workshop?" "Okay, it won't help." "Shit." "Nothing like this has ever happened." "Never before." "Never!" "That's why I registered it at the first glance." "There is, I would say ... a difference of about 0.7 mm." "But that's actually something." "This is really shit." "We've sold the 109, the 245 is torn apart..." "This ... can't be true." "This is a catastrophe." "If I don't get it ready for the Bach recordings, I don't know what I'll do." "Because this piano needs time." "And now I have to leave for the music festival." "Then, at the opening of the Konzerthaus ... this piano will not be there." "That is absolutely unthinkable." "Unthinkable." ""The grand has no hammer heads in it anymore"." "That's why I'm somewhat distressed." "I've asked them to turn it around because it's longer than the width of the stage." "They will now have to lift it up." "Now it's getting tight." "Come in!" "Come up here!" "I turned off some of the lights as it was getting a little hot." "I think Mr. Brendel doesn't need too much light anyway." "Could you check the sounds from the top?" "Yes, I will do that." "We now even out the tone." "Ideally, a concert piano ... should have the same tone colour from top to bottom ... and the same dynamic possibilities." "When something is too quiet or too loud ... it can be adjusted." "And Stefan Knüpfer helps with that ... in the friendliest manner." "The F needs more." "You have played on this piano before." "Yes." "Exactly one year ago at Schloss Kammer." "It's the same piano." "Ah, yes!" "I'll play with that now for a while." "Good, I'll be outside." "The colour in the head of a pianist, that he would like ... be it Mr. Brendel, Mr. Aimard or whoever, stays the same." "He always wants the same tone colour for a specific repertoire." "But the conditions, the location, the instrument ..." "The entire situation, the humidity, the temperature ..." "All this changes." "And now it has to be continuously remixed ... so that what is produced right there, the quality of the sound ... conforms with what the artist imagines." "That is the difficulty that needs to be constantly addressed." "I'm going to play now." "Ask a great pianist if he really is satisfied ... and he will say: "Well ..."" "Pianists are mostly dissatisfied:" ""One could play this a little bit better, one could have done that differently."" "They are perhaps satisfied with parts or maybe with an entire evening." "When I see the kind of life pianists have, then I am really happy:" "I can get off stage when the public comes in." "Thank you." "Bye." "Okay." "Bye." "These must be the hammer heads." "Yes, great!" "This is something else here." "They'll fit." "This is skin and leather." "Does it smell?" "We've been lucky, the hammer heads arrived." "The Mozart Hall is empty at night." "Oh well, I'll have to do some overtime." "I have a super idea." "I still have an old violin at home." "It could be built onto the lid support." "Then Aleksey could play violin on it, on the concert grand." "It should work." "That we mount the strings on this part ..." "Here, the pins, because it's a little thicker." "One could do it on top too." "And while the other plays the piano, he could play violin like this." "I have to check how a violin functions and if one can put it on top of it." "Pretty sick, to ask a violinist if he has a violin that could be chopped up." "The first thing that he said was:" ""You want to smash it?"" "He has the right instinct." "What am I supposed to do with a violin?" "Absolutely ingenious ..." "Now it's about having new ideas for these sketches." "I keep thinking:" "How can the piano be rebuilt so that something happens?" "ONE DAY BEFORE THE BACH RECORDINGS" "Dust!" "A Japanese technician..." "A Japanese technician, who stood in the back ... once took a tuft of dust out of the sounding board ... and held it up in front of me and said:" ""Oh, Stefan, look what I found."" "And I asked:" ""Where did you get that?"" "He said:" ""That was on the sounding board."" "And I said:" ""Put it back immediately."" "I can't remember if he actually did it, but he was shocked." "Everything changes the sound, even dust." "Hello, Stefan." "Good morning." "How are you?" "Good." "The flight was good?" "Yes, a little late." "Oh well, but ..." "The instrument is very open." "Extremely, more than when we tried it." "It's in any case more direct." "Extreme, isn't it?" "Too much?" "I think ..." "Yes." "Is the sound not better in front?" "It's fuller, isn't it?" "But it comes late." "Well, I'll go along with that." "Because I can always find a combination." "I don't love the sound." "I don't know if I can organise it, but I'm considering ... showing you the other grand piano." "Yes?" "As what?" "As ..." "I don't know, as an idea." "Because the problem is, if I take this lightness away ... it's as if you are touching the left pedal very lightly." "More than the other, somewhere ..." "But ..." "Nice." "We could try to get this grand on the stage tomorrow." "When does it begin in the morning?" "Oh, I should've come yesterday." "It begins at 10 o'clock." "But the fundamental tone is better." "On the 245?" "Here." "On this one." "That is more your tone, in any case." "I have to speak with someone important." "Thank you, bye." "I have a problem." "Really." "Would it be conceivable ..." "He is not quite satisfied, for the recordings." "Would it be conceivable to try the other piano at the Mozart Hall?" "Tomorrow?" "Now." "She's going to go berserk." "The 780 is required on the stage in the Mozart Hall." "Mr. Knüpfer is standing next to me." "Mr." "Aimard requires it." "We are all here until 4 pm only." "That sounds as if I'm the one who wants it." "What could still be done today?" "Schubert Hall?" "Good, and the situation?" "He wants to hear both next to each other." "So the 780, but not together with that one?" "Together." "It should be brought here as a kind of warehouse." "Could you also turn it around?" "Thank you." "So, that's easier to control." "Nicer, more normal ... and somehow a little ... not more banal, it's too beautiful for that, but more ..." "I think we could do more with the 245." "When does the actual recording begin?" "Not before 2 pm, anyway." "When we've recorded for a few minutes we'll be ... more relaxed." "Then everything will be easier." "START OF THE BACH RECORDINGS" "Do them all again, I changed the plugs." "Let's start from the beginning." "I'll begin with the high notes." "Basses." "M50, left," "M50, right." "Then we have a ..." "Surround right." "Even better." "We've done pretty much everything." "Now all we need is the artist." "I will go up and listen in a bit." "And then we'll record." "Question." "If I tune in the mornings and evenings, and in between nothing happens," "I can do almost nothing with the second tuning." "But he plays in the way he wants it to sound ... and it gets out of tune." "And then I can tune." "That is of course great." "Because then things have changed enormously." "We are going to define the first sound ... keeping in mind what we want for the second sound." "It would make more sense if we first take enough time for these sounds." "Okay?" "Of course, absolutely." "Stefan is also doing something ..." "He has, yes." "But I think that we need a little reserve on three, four notes:" "F, G, A." "That's good music." "Yes, good." "Better?" "I'm outside, all right?" "Then we'll record it in this way." "Recording?" "Yes." "Nice." "Nice room ..." "It's perfect." "And it's in three voices, but it sounds like two voices." "As a sound, it's very nice." "I slightly reduced the room atmosphere." "I think that's quite good." "Excellent." "It gives this lightness." "I don't also play that deep, right?" "Exactly." "Not so much in the core of the sound." "That makes for that "Leggiero"." "It creates ..." "Very nice." "There will always be the danger that it's a bit too controlled." "So please ..." "So you changed the room atmosphere." "Are the group dynamics endangered?" "If you now bring movement into processes, independently ... without involving me even a little." "We are still a team somehow, you know?" "For me it's okay." "Then it's good." "Yes, but ..." "No, I'll watch out." "But I can do it." "Really, no." "Too heavy a thumb ... shouldn't drive us in the wrong direction." "There are pianists ... who pay great attention to the consistency of the instrument." "And I always have the impression, after the concert, on the next day ... that the instrument is even more consistent than before the concert." "There's a power put into it ... which leaves an imprint on the sounding board." "Not a visual imprint, that one can feel ... but a tonal imprint that one can hear." "Good morning." "Good morning, sunshine, the night is hidden from you" "But you mustn't be sad" "Good morning sunshine, let it get into your head" "I don't know him like this." "Before, he couldn't sing at all." "It is going to be the first solo recording with sound reflectors." "Until now they were used with an orchestra, which was the original reason for the reflectors." "But today Pierre-Laurent will use them for his organ-like sound." "I'm convinced that it will sound good in the hall ... but the problem will be capturing it in the recording." "The coffee machine!" "Can I clear this up here?" "At the beginning of the sound you have all the harmonics." "At the end of the sound, you only have the root note." "In between, this is what happens:" "the harmonics diminish." "Then, after tuning, the overtones are gone, otherwise it would waver ..." "Stefan, part of your art is, let's say ... to make less complicated situations look more complicated." "Was this complicated?" "No, but you simply could say you put it out of tune minimally until it wavers a bit." "But then comes the next question ..." ""There is a range, the sound is like ..."" "You were the ones who said:" ""You can't hear that ..."" "We're recording again." "There is another beautiful major seventh." "Good." "Let's listen." "I'll just play." "Oh, that's different." "Yes, very different." "It's too much." "We lost the ..." "This is the previous take." "Yes, it sounded ..." "That's it!" "It has everything." "The rhythm, integration." "Precisely." "That's it!" "Fine, but ..." "But we tried it." "He only has to press the "Undo" key." "Sorry?" "He has to press the "Undo" key on the piano, then he'll have it again." "I'm sorry ..." "These three notes?" "They don't notice them." "This remains." "These three sounds remain." "I'm sorry." "How does one do that there?" "It looks like poking around." "It is poking around." "Yes, nice that you get to the point concretely." "And with it the pressure of the key-stroke also changes?" "It will immediately give him another possibility ... to produce a different tone." "He instantly feels that." "And he is one who really ..." "He feels something immediately where you think one cannot feel that ..." "The moment his fingers touch the keys, he tells you immediately what you did." "It's fascinating." "You play piano?" "I'd say that I played piano for a very long time." "When I see the oldest hands in this concert business ... have such a difficult life, don't necessarily live healthy." "Many of them are a little too neurotic, aren't they?" "Yes, that could ..." "... sounds too negative?" "Instead of neurotic, I'd say specialised." "I am surely as neurotic as far as this is concerned." "When I hear a piano on the radio ... and I turn it off because I can't stand the bad sound, or when one plays a CD and says:" ""I can't stand it", that's also a neurosis." "But it's specialisation on the highest level." "It can also be seen like that." "You'll let me know when you want to record?" "He said: "You can record everything that you hear."" "Soon we will do the organ pieces?" "What's the difference between "with air" and "without air"?" "It's a mechanical change, about how directly the hammer heads can reach the strings." "So there is not so much "attack"?" "If one plays in the same way, yes." "But he doesn't." "He plays with more power ... so the hammer head touches the string like that, and not like that." "This is the direct tone, if he plays hard ... and if not, this is what happens." "So it flies ..." "We will listen to it." "We're recording." "Are you recording?" "One moment, we need just one second." "We're rolling." "One moment, please." "One more, I'm sorry." "Yes, we're rolling." "It's rolling here too." "Recording?" "He's rockin'!" "Superb!" "They found a very good solution." "I brought it up a little." "There!" "The organ should sound rather bigger and all." "We begin with the pieces that are more assertive." "That are more what?" "More assertive." "Big organ sound, so to speak." "With air?" "No, without air." "That's why we are doing them." "Fabulous." "Listen now ..." "Actually one could be a bit further away, if it works." "That was exactly the effect, to go closer again." "Understand?" "Or we'll try to see how much we can adjust it in the mix." "I'm coming up." "We will listen to the tracks in the order we recorded them." "You want to come in the front, Stefan?" "No it's all right." "On the one hand we should move further away, on the other hand move closer." "It is more present and has more room." "Totally without sails?" "Interesting!" "We didn't see any great advantage now." "If you ask me..." "No question!" "What you can see here very nicely ..." "We're coming closer to the sound if we use some filters and so on ..." "But ultimately these sound reflectors ... come out of the idea, out of the necessity ... of the piano being turned into the orchestra and no longer sounding good ... to minimise this problem." "Still, when you listen to it without the orchestra, you notice it's only a device ... compared with the normal set up for which the grand piano is built." "I think that ... we have to ... find a different solution." "We are in Vienna." "Very Viennese." "Too Viennese." "Yeah, right ..." "We only have recorded 6.59 GB today ..." "Yesterday it was 9.23." "We've been lazy today." "A classical piano with these reflectors ... looks a little bit spacy." "What looks different ... simply cannot sound good." "For me it's logical:" "We are dividing the piano with its sounds into segments ... and we have two microphones here and two there." "It isn't enough." "However, it sounded so beautiful in the hall yesterday." "It was unbelievable." "It was so beautiful." "That's why I was surprised." "Sounds good." "Stefan, this is astonishing!" "There it's starting again." "One of them, to the right." "It's starting." "Stefan comes down again." "I need this, unfortunately." "Are there any others, besides ..." "No, it's really great." "Is it still clean enough?" "It's wonderfully clean." "Yes, they are really open." "Definitely." "I don't know if this one is good." "I find it very interesting." "It's all right." "But it goes down." "I stretched the piano so extremely this morning ... that the smallest movement causes the piano to tip over." "It's no longer clean then, it's too sharp, or changes the sound." "It is really tuned razor sharp." "I think today will be a very sportive day for me." "No problem, we'll send Stefan back down." "You can leave the cake here." "I told my wife about the successful ..." "I have to make this clear now." "I told my wife about the unsuccessful attempts with the reflectors." "She thought that a cheese cake would be appropriate." "What would we have gotten if it had worked out?" "Also a cheesecake." "Because she immediately said:" ""That isn't going to work."" "It's really good." "I have to run now." "It's too sharp for me." "Listen to that, please." "Yes, and the length is perfect." "Otherwise I'd have to tune it all down." "No, perfect." "Thank you." "Thank you." "Then we can begin." "For me, the F is on the verge of being out of tune." "Whenever it appears within a third." "I had just set my marker here..." "The F sounds pretty sharp." "It is not as if I were disappointed." "Absolutely not." "This is like scientific research for me." "We leave it like that." "He can come." "Every tone is alive." "I tried to give every single tone at the beginning ... that special movement." "Yes, it's fantastic!" "From the start till the end it is very expressive ... but also discreet." "The result from all this, tonally, was so sensational ... that he stopped in the middle of playing and said: "Stefan," "I've always dreamt of this sound."" "So it was right on ..." "It couldn't have been better." "ONE DAY AFTER THE BACH RECORDINGS"