I’m not a sports person. Skinny and hollow chested, I was much more at home behind the music stand practicing horn in high school than doing anything athletic. Now that I’m older I appreciate not having the knee and hip problems that many of my more physically active peers have, but I regret having to get into an exercising habit at an older age for health reasons. I wish that I had developed more of a physically active habit earlier in life. That being said, the problem with sports is that they simplify life; there is a winner and a loser and that’s that. Ok, it’s a little more complicated than that, but not much. Teamwork, strategy, tactics blah blah, the end result is the same, you want to win by an objective standard (score, clock, set of judges) and if you don’t win, you loose. Yes, second place in

Garrick is a good friend of Bosendorfer and graciously agreed, at an event at the Museum of Arts and Design in NYC, to give a sampling from his upcoming all Scriabin recital. This was music making of the highest order, in the most wonderful, casual, engaging setting you can imagine.

Why am I such a Bosendorfer geek? In a nutshell, everything I know about high end pianos I learned from Bosendorfer. Seeing my first Imperial at the University of Wisconsin/Madison at the ripe age of 20 set me on my path. From then on, there was nothing so dramatic, spectacular and, well, downright sexy as that piano. The extra keys, the shape of the rim, the construction detail, the sound, there was nothing like it, especially not the Steinway D’s scattered about the building. Later, to my utter amazement, I got the chance to work there. I was trained at the factory, did concert service throughout the US, and became the first US Service manager. yes, I are a technician …can you identify the world famous pianist on the right? Then, again later, after a stint with a major East coast Steinway dealer and 12 years at Yamaha, I had

I’ve been trying to come up with some examples of recordings where the non-Steinway piano is notated, AND it is a good representation of that makers sound. I have many Bosendorfer examples, mostly Garrick Ohlsson’s vast output. I have also found some bad examples, such as good piano sound but bad playing (no, not Garrick) and good playing but bad piano sound. In the case of Bosendorfer, if the right technician isn’t working on it, then it is not going to be a good representation of the Bosendorfer sound. I have found a recording of Garrick’s made on his rebuilt Mason & Hamlin (Prokofiev, Bartok, Webern, Barber) which, to my ear, does have a good representative Mason sound. Personally, I’m not crazy about the piano sound but I love the repertoire. I also recently acquired another recording that is the best of both…good piano playing and good piano sound. In this case,