World of Piano Tuners

Have you ever wondered how piano tuners learn their trade? Most tuners learn the business of a family member. In fact, the piano tunes that often crosses several generations in one family, given down from father to son.

There are good tuners and big boxes, but in any case have to learn an art that is several hundred years and has changed little.

There are three different types of tuners: tuners, repairers and rebuilders. Tuner usually works his way up from simple adaptation to the most difficult task of repairing and after reconstruction.

A tuner can count on $ 100 for the adaptation, but if you work for someone else can take only half of that. However, it is a job much in demand.

The adaptation takes the average at least an hour, requiring silence and solitude, but the very best tuners, usually working for a company like Steinway are big, you can expect to be on the call to the most famous concert pianists.

These superstars of the piano business libration between racks in major concerts, hoping to break the sequence occasionally so they can jump out onto the stage and set it in front of thousands of people.

One such tuner is superstar Francisco Mohr, who was tuner and repairer for two pianists, Vladimir Horowitz and Arthur Rubinstein legendary. As an employee of the Steinway Company, is delegated to accompany either of these two great artists on their tours of the world, hammer and pliers in adaptation, should something go wrong, ready it the most dramatic being a sequence that was broken during a concert.

Mohr was a personal friend of Horowitz and Rubinstein, was part of its International Committee.

Mohr selected pianos for Horowitz, Horowitz never took it to company piano. For this you must understand that force the big concert pianists often play in a variety of instruments in their paths. The only solution to this problem of inconsistency is to take a piano with you, and it is very, very expensive, requiring genuine superstar status.

Horowitz had his magnificent Steinway concert favorite of 9 feet, and he kept them in the country. When he came for a concert tour, used to neighbors of his townhouse on the upper east side of New York City in light of the huge piano that was slowly lowered out the window and on a waiting car.

Mohr and other great tuners that I have known as Steinway ‘s Heinz Zimmerman were artists in their own right. To tune and repair a piano for a professional pianist is an extremely demanding, because the results should indeed be perfect. Each key must feel exactly the same. Each key must feel, the artist, as if they have the same weight, same feeling, the same speed. The process that achieves this is called the piano , and regulation can take several days to adjust the thousands of tiny moving parts

There is no better feeling that a great pianist at a grand piano, warm and well regulated, for the beautiful music that he hopes will be played