Grand Actions
I first met New Zealand-born score composer Alan Griffiths and Ukrainian-Australian concert pianist Evgeny Ukhanov when they both came up to record in my Blue Mountains studio with high hopes. Hopes I’d helped raise. They’d had a number of very disappointing experiences in studios around Melbourne when trying to record their body of classical compositions for solo piano. Alan sent the files to me to have a listen, and I was quietly confident we could do better. At the time an arts trust had installed a Steinway Model D concert grand in Underwood Studio’s main room, and I assured him we could do a far better job with our Steinway and studio combination.
Boy, did I eat those words.
A piano’s sensitivity, touch and ability to communicate its rich harmonic vocabulary comes from the culmination of all its 12,000 moving parts working together harmoniously. Crucially, the piano’s ‘action’ — its hammers, keys, and how the two combine to strike the strings — is the pianist’s key to unlocking that vocabulary. The Steinway we had at the studio had three prepared actions: one for predominantly classical players, one more modern (Wessel, Nickel & Gross) action for jazz and other projects, and one premium action awaiting the likes of Mr Ukhanov!
The day finally came for our first session and the wonderful Steinway Model D — King of
