Hybrid Pianos, revisited

Two years ago, as I was exploring pianos with the idea of purchasing one for retirement, I concluded that I would probably end up with a hybrid piano rather than a traditional acoustic piano. But some questions remain. I wrote:

Can the best of the hybrids be the solo instrument for a piano concerto with the top-level orchestras of the world, and the top concert artists? Can they do the job for chamber music, again with world-class performers? Can they satisfy pianists whose career is on the line, and their fellow musicians, collaborators in music such as Schubert’s song cycle "Winterreise," the Brahms violin sonatas, Messiaen’s Quartet for the End of Time?

Here is a partial answer: a Casio hybrid piano in a Mozart concerto with chamber orchestra at the Berlin Philharmonie, one of the world’s great music venues. The clip includes some side-by-side playing, with one pianist at the Casio, another at the (acoustic) concert grand, trading off Mozart phrases. And an audience in the room to hear it.

Some observations:

- The Casio holds its own quite respectably, in my opinion. One can find disagreement with this in the comments to the YouTube clip.
- It is different in sound from the acoustic, but no more different in my opinion than two acoustic grands might be from one another.
- This was, of course, a made-for-YouTube commercial message from Casio. Not a real concert. One should remain skeptical.
- The Casio retails for around $5,000. A concert grand will set you back closer to $150,000-200,000.
- According to the Casio rep speaking at about the 1:20 mark in the video, it was the chamber orchestra's idea to do this. From earlier in the clip, it appears that the Casio was the piano in their smaller rehearsal hall. Casio rep: "[The orchestra] said 'You've got a wonderful instrument there. We want, together with you, to show it on the stage, and show our grand hybrid as a completely acoustic instrument, with all the other acoustic instruments in the orchestra.'" Very interesting, if all of this is true.

I think Casio has made their point: the instrument would be suitable for professional concert use. It would be even more suitable, and economical, for situations such as a choir room or the rehearsal room seen in the video.

Most aficionados of digital instruments would agree that the Casio hybrids are not the best of the bunch: the Yamaha AvantGrand hybrids are better, and Kawai has a new offering in the field that many people like; both of these are considerably more expensive. These pianos would surely do as well or better than the Casio in a similar side-by-side comparison with orchestra.

My thoughts have not changed from when I explored these things in 2016. Pending the circumstances in which we retire, I still hope to purchase the Casio, to sit alongside my clavichord.

[Edited to add: As soon as I posted this, I found a performance of Rachmaninoff with Casio hybrid and orchestra. It is another made-for-YouTube commercial message by Casio, but puts the piano in the situation where I doubted whether it could hold up: alongside an orchestra in "big" Romantic repertoire. I note that the piano is miked and amplified by a speaker facing out into the hall (you can see the setup briefly at the 43 second mark of the video). But it is a mike picking up the acoustic sound from the instrument, not a direct feed from the electronics. There is also a monitor speaker aimed toward the conductor. It is clearly a "real" performance, not something that has been heavily doctored up. My impression, best one can tell from the recording, is that I was right in my 2016 essay, that in this setting, a hybrid piano falls short of the "real thing." But not by much.

My question at that point was in regard as to whether a hybrid piano could accompany congregational singing as well as our Steinway, in the same manner in which the electronic organs all fall short of a good pipe organ in this task. I think that remains an open question. The hybrid pianos are designed to sound as closely as possible like a good acoustic grand from the perspective of the player, sitting at the bench. That is different from projecting sufficient sound into a large hall to balance an orchestra - or a vigorously singing congregation. You can always take a feed from the line out, send it into an amplifier and speakers, and make it as loud as you want. But that strikes me as cheating.]

I was glad when they said unto me...

I was glad when they said unto me: Let us go into the house of the LORD.

Here is a three-hour YouTube video of the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II at Westminster Abbey, 2 June 1953, as broadcast by the BBC.

If you click the “more” button in the YouTube description, you will find a description of the musical forces – including twenty trebles chosen by audition from parish choirs by the RSCM, who spent a month in residence at Addington Palace preparing to join the choristers of the Abbey, St. Paul’s, and St. George’s, Windsor: 182 trebles in all. With the ATBs and orchestral forces: 480 musicians.

And you will find the music list. Of particular interest to my friends who attended this summer’s RSCM St. Louis Course, the Hubert Parry anthem “I was glad” (22 and a half minutes into the tape), in its proper liturgical setting. It comes at the end of a twenty-minute procession (accompanied by part of Handel’s Water Music) as the Queen enters the abbey, with the “Vivats” as she and her attendants pass under the Rood Screen into the choir and chancel. The quieter section “O pray for the peace of Jerusalem” comes as she kneels for prayer. Since this is a television broadcast, they unfortunately lower the volume for the announcer to speak during the climactic ending of the anthem, as the Crown and other regalia are placed on the Altar.

Following the Parry, a bit of high-stakes organ improvisation, by (I think) William McKie, organist of the Abbey. [Correction: I see in the comments to the video that McKie was conducting the combined musical forces during the service; Sir Adrian Boult had conducted the orchestral music before and after the service. Osborne Peasegood (1902-1962), sub-organist of the Abbey, was organist for the service.] There is a bit of Parry’s hymn tune Laudate Dominum (O praise ye the Lord) near the end of it, and additional improvisation at various points, most notably near the end as the retiring procession begins, leading up to the fanfare and the National Anthem (God save the Queen). First-rate playing in the grand English cathedral manner.

There is much more of musical interest: first performances of anthems by Herbert Howells, William H. Harris, George Dyson; a newly composed Te Deum by William Walton, and anthems composed for the occasion by Healey Willan and Ralph Vaughan Williams.

RVW has a large musical part in this service: it is his setting of the Mass which is sung (the Credo and Sanctus from his G Minor Mass), plus his setting of the Old Hundredth Psalm Tune, arranged for this occasion (1 hour 53 minutes into the tape). This is a great masterpiece, one of my favorites of his works – but the greatest gem is a bit later, during Holy Communion: a short motet which RVW wrote for the occasion, “O taste and see” (2 hours 17 minutes). After all of the loud music and grandeur, an unaccompanied treble solo (sung by a small group of trebles, it sounds like), then the choir, quiet and unaccompanied. Ninety seconds and it is done. The effect in this context is stunning.

There is more even than this: some Stanford, and Samuel Sebastian Wesley, the Tudor anthem “Rejoice in the Lord alway,” an Amen by Gibbons, and “Zadok the Priest,” which has been sung at every coronation since Handel wrote it for George II. It is as essential to a British coronation as “I was glad” has become.

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Three impressions:

It is hard to overstate the impressiveness of the choir’s initial entrance in “I was glad,” the first vocal music of the day. Most of the congregation had been there for hours. A long prelude of orchestral music had preceded the procession. Already the leaders of church and state had walked down the aisle, the archbishops of York and Canterbury among them, and the Prime Ministers of the Commonwealth, followed by the Prime Minister of Great Britain, Winston Churchill, one of the heroes of the twentieth century. A brass fanfare, then the majestic introduction that begins the Parry. And then the choir sings.

The Coronation is above all else a sacred liturgy according to the use of the Church of England, in essence an Ordination, complete with Gospel, Creed, Offertory of Bread and Wine (handed to the Archbishop by the new Queen), Eucharistic Prayer, Confession, Communion. I wonder whether the next coronation will include such things, given the multi-cultural and thoroughly secular nature of modern Britain.

On this day, Elizabeth is a very serious and determined young woman. She came of age during the Battle of Britain and a war where it seemed that Britain might be destroyed forever; she knew that the post-war world was changing in ways that were unknowable, and that it was her responsibility to lead her people through it.

From her Christmas Message the previous December:

At my Coronation next June, I shall dedicate myself anew to your service. I shall do so in the presence of a great congregation, drawn from every part of the Commonwealth and Empire, while millions outside Westminster Abbey will hear the promises and the prayers being offered up within its walls, and see much of the ancient ceremony in which Kings and Queens before me have taken part through century upon century.

You will be keeping it as a holiday; but I want to ask you all, whatever your religion may be, to pray for me on that day - to pray that God may give me wisdom and strength to carry out the solemn promises I shall be making, and that I may faithfully serve Him and you, all the days of my life.

Scales (with an afterword on Modes)

My piano student figured out on her own how to play a C major scale. We had introduced the concept of thumb-turns in the context of something she was playing, and she took it from there. It showed up in one of her improvisations (complete with the correct right hand fingering, which I did not teach her). I pointed it out to her and told her it was important. We then worked out the left hand fingering; I emphasized that for now scales must be SLOW and steady, thinking about good tone and hand position; we added them to her practice routine, which now (I hope) begins as follows:

Prayer
Scales
Other Stuff

She returned for the next lesson with C major, one octave, hands separately, played slowly and accurately.

So far, so good.
For as long as she is a musician, she will be playing scales. As will I.

But I got away from them for a number of years in midlife. I was bored with them, and focused instead on the pieces I was trying to learn. Insofar as I was doing technical work at all, it was more from the Brahms “Fifty-One Exercises” than anything else.

Then I began to improvise.

Dupré’s course on improvisation begins with the harmonization of the major scale, then minor. I spent a long time with this, in all keys. Scale in the soprano. Scale “en taille” (in the tenor). Scale in the pedals, or the left hand bass. It was a grind, but over the years since then it has proven increasingly worthwhile that I spent the time on this.

After Gerre Hancock published his book on improvisation, I found that he too began with scales, in a considerably freer approach. Unlike Dupré, Hancock encouraged creative harmonization in any style that takes your fancy in the moment.

That finally made it fun to play scales. When I am practicing free (non-hymn-based) improvisation, I often begin with a few scales – harmonized or contrapuntally oriented (or best of all, both), and let them lead me in whatever direction the ensuing music wants to go. Even when the work at hand is preparation to improvise on a specific tune, I might begin with the scale for the keys I hope to use in the improvisation before beginning to “learn the tune” (playing it in unison, and taking it from there).

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Afterword:
Much more could be said about scales. I content myself with a final observation:

Play in and with the Modes.

Work with them in the same manner as major/minor: the scale in the soprano, chords harmonizing each note of the scale, up and down, slowly. Later, the scale in an inner voice or the bass. Do it in as many keys as you can. This remains for me a work in progress. If you ask me to knock out a quick harmonized scale in F sharp Mixolydian with subsequent improvisation, the results would likely be less than professional. But I am working on it.

The secret is to think “Where is Do?” In the above case, Mixolydian has the keynote on Sol, so Do is on B. Five sharps. It also helps – a lot – to notice that Mixolydian is Major with a flat seventh degree. So I can think “F sharp major” and play E naturals. All four of the Modes have near neighbors that are helpful in this manner:

Dorian – like natural Minor, with raised sixth degree
Phrygian – like natural Minor, with lowered second degree
Lydian – like Major, with raised fourth degree
Mixolydian – like Major, with lowered seventh degree

A benefit of this sort of work is that one soon gets a feel for the mode. What chords make a good cadence? What chord combinations work well, which ones not so much? What chords work well with specific scale degrees?

And: What is the characteristic ethos of the mode? Mixolydian has a sober dignity to it that I love: Lydian is the most joyful of modes, even more than Major: Dorian is like Minor but with greater strength and a yearning that comes from the raised sixth degree: Phrygian is strange, something all its own. To explain it I commend to you the magnificent Third Tune of Thomas Tallis (the Third Mode being another name for Phrygian), and the Fantasia on this tune by Vaughan Williams.

That brings me to another benefit of work with the modes: you might start sounding like Vaughan Williams. Or Herbert Howells.

I suspect that these composers got their “sound” in part from long exposure to the Modes – for RVW, it was his work with folksongs; for Howells, his work with the Tudor Church Music project. I can imagine them playing around at a piano with these things, finding the characteristic harmonizations and melodic patterns.