Centenary celebrations for the Pianoforte Tuners’ Association
2 October 2013
Delegates at this year's PTA convention, held in Bournemouth
The Pianoforte Tuners’ Association (PTA) marks its 100th birthday this month.
The PTA was formed in October 1913, during the heyday of
piano manufacturing, to protect the interests of tuners and to offer
instruction to apprentices. Today, the association promotes the importance of
regular, skilled tuning and servicing while bringing together piano tuners and
Planned centenary celebrations include a Fazioli training day at Jaques Samuel Pianos in London and a Kawai technical class followed by the Scottish Autumn Dinner in Stirling. Earlier this year, the PTA convention was held in Bournemouth. It provided technical seminars, sponsored by Steinway & Sons, Kawai and Morley Pianos. The convention concluded with a gala dinner and charity auction that raised £1,800 divided between the Musicians’ Benevolent Fund and the Association’s Student Fund.
There are currently around 230 PTA Members in the UK and members use the letters MPTA after their names which helps the public to identify competent tuners in their area. Entry to the Association is achieved by passing three examinations to very high standards. Students must work for at least two years after their college training, completing a minimum of five years in total, before being eligible to apply for PTA membership.
30 September 2013
Author Jessica Duchen reads from Alicia's Gift
Viv Mclean performs works from the novel
IP contributor Jessica Duchen will embark on an unusual book
tour this winter; her musically inspired novel, Alicia’s Gift, has been turned
into a concert.
The story follows the piano prodigy Alicia Bradley and her embattled parents from the revelation of her talent aged three through to her adulthood and her participation in the Leeds International Piano Competition.
This is not the first time Duchen has dabbled with words and music. Her novel Hungarian Dances was turned into a narrated concert to great acclaim, and the featured music is available on a dedicated CD on the Onyx label. Duchen is the author of four novels, biographies of Gabriel Fauré and Erich Wolfgang Korngold, and writes for the Independent and many specialist magazines, including International Piano.
The Alicia’s Gift concert explores its heroine’s story
with the help of some of the music in her life, alternating a narrative based
on the book with a variety of engaging illustrative piano works, performed by
Viv McLean (piano winner of the Royal Over-seas League Music Competition, First Prize
at the 2002 Maria Canals International Piano Competition in Barcelona).
Alicia’s passion for Chopin is reflected in selections
ranging from the Third Ballade to the stormy Etude Op 25 No 12. Her emotional
growth is mirrored in the atmospheric worlds of Granados and Ravel, among
others. Her search for the perfect teacher carries her
through a roller coaster of Czerny, Debussy and Gershwin.
‘The idea of my concerts-of-the-novel is
that these performances should be more than just alternating words and music,’
explains Duchen. ‘The two must be so closely integrated in terms of
appropriateness and emotional content that they effectively unite in a
different form of storytelling that becomes a genre in its own right.
‘I’m not sure whose idea it was that we should end the concert with a piano duet. We’ve picked the final number of Ravel’s ‘Mother Goose’ Suite and I get to play the glissandi, which should be fun – at least, I hope so. Playing the piano in public terrifies me, so I’m not sure what I’m letting myself in for!’
Modartt’s Pianoteq is a forward-thinking virtual piano that offers a practical solution for discerning and tech-savvy pianist-composers. IP has teamed up with Modartt to offer one lucky reader the advanced version of the software – Pianoteq Pro – PLUS the piano add-ons: U4 upright, Blüthner Model 1 and YC5 Rock Piano, worth nearly £500.
According to its makers Modartt, Pianoteq is the world’s first ‘fourth generation’ piano, after the acoustic, electro-acoustic pianos and present-day sampled instruments where each note has been separately pre-recorded at different dynamic levels. Pianoteq relies on physical modelling with real time response – but at the same time, the entire package is only 20MB in size, making it economical in terms of space. You can use Pianoteq on any laptop and connect it to your MIDI compatible piano keyboard.
There’s the freedom to adjust multiple setting – from the tuning, shape of the soundboard, hammer hardness and damper control to the position of the lid and even the mic placement – as well as the facility to edit the parameters of each individual note, allowing for almost limitless variation.