Introduction

Six interactive concert events entitled ‘Piano Contrasts’ were produced at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music to examine the sounds of the Stuart and Steinway pianos in performance, and to conduct audience surveys on piano timbre identification. 331 audience members participated in the surveys.²⁵¹ The series of concert-surveys presented the same pianos previously examined in chapter four, the Stuart M19 (STU) and Steinway (STE) No 574500, in concert. Repertoires of jazz, popular and classical music were performed in the concerts. Three concerts were performed by a piano duo, and three concerts by a jazz trio. The researcher Kevin Hunt, a jazz pianist, was the central performer of each concert, assisted by musical colleagues in his jazz trio and piano duo settings. The other pianist in the piano duo was Simon Tedeschi, a highly acclaimed concert pianist. The experience of performing on the Stuart piano M19 (STU) in the concert series provided the researcher with the opportunity to befriend the new instrument in performance, experimenting with the parameters of its tonal qualities and capabilities whilst familiarity grew with each performance.

The audience surveys were conducted using multiple –choice questions, printed on sheets for the audience to fill out during the performance. In each question on piano tone, the participant was prompted to select from a list of verbal attributes that describe piano tonal colour. Past experience in deciphering piano tone was not a prerequisite condition for participation in the surveys, so both experienced and inexperienced listeners participated in the surveys. It was understood that the audience members who participated in the survey were unified as a group by their interest in deciphering the sounds of the Stuart and Steinway pianos. Each question had a written ‘comments’ option, which provided the research with a resource of unanticipated answers, whereas the multiple-choice questions by their nature of prediction, set the tonal parametres of choice, anticipating the range of response and

²⁵¹See Appendix 5 Part II, p.131