Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Piano Tuner-Technicians Forum Some sweet video's: an older piano tuned to an Unequal Temp

Hi!

Dr Francis and beats - well whilst one might express a tuning in commas, but writing a wiggly mnemonic on top of a piece of music looks as though it's written to and for a musician, who'd hear beatings per second rather than commas.

So I'd rather go with Dr F than LB and I'm familiar with Prof Jorgensen's researches and work . . . Perhaps Francis should not be so easily dismissed. However I have not tuned the Francis temperaments - has anyone done so?

Bill - thanks for joining in - I have read some of your writings before. It would be great perhaps if you might be able to write out the EBVT tuning sequence or link to further details. I've been tempted towards recommendations for Young and am intrigued you say it's too harsh. How harsh compared perhaps to Kirnberger?

I like Kirnberger on the harpsichord but it's one step harsher than the tuning I usually use and on the piano in my mind it's got a big label "approach with care"! However, it has a flavour approaching Meantone without being so critical.

One problem is that audiences don't notice the milder temperaments and say they can't hear the difference . . . so it's that delicate balance to be achieved in being harsh enough to hear but soft enough to tolerate . . .

My explorations into temperaments started with Padgham's pink book in the early 80s - it's a brilliant book but so useful that I keep losing it . . .

Best wishes

David Pinnegar

I've tuned harpsichords for 30 years without ever counting beats. You usually start with a "good" third, then fit in the fifths to be "similar". E.g., for Kirnberger III, probably the easiest WT to set, you tune a pure CE, fit in the 4 fifths it spans, and you're done, the rest are pure 5ths.

I think beat counting is a modern piano tuning thing. A big improvement in accuracy of course, but still modern.

If you search for EBVT you'll find incredibly detailed instructions posted here by Bill on how to tune like that.
Young's has 2 Pythogorean thirds, KB3 has 5 (3 of them a little narrower, but still quite harsh).

What I don't like about KB3 and Young is its symmetry, mentioned also by Bill. It looks good on paper but symmetry means more keys will sounds alike. If you take the WT route you might as well enjoy the differences in key colour to the max and make them all different. I think this is why Werckmeister III sounds better than KB3 even though both have 4 fifths narrow by 1/4 comma, but KB3 is "regular" in that the 4 tempered fifths are consecutive, whereas in WM3 3 are consecutive but the 4th is placed asymmetrical in a strategical position.

It depends on the audience of course. What I like about Bill's EBVT is that I really can't tell the temperament is unequal, but the piano just sounds better.

Kees

This is veering off in another direction, David, but could you tell us a bit more about the pianos? I at first thought that the Emerson piano was older, but then I saw the video in which Adolfo Barabino mentions that the Hammerwood Park Bechstein is from the 1880's, so now I'm not so sure. (Both sound great. The aspects of the Emerson piano that some people might want to improve, to me, give it character.) Do you find that the scaling, or other aspects of the design, on older pianos makes them sound better in a well temperament than a new piano sounds in a well temp?

Part of the motivation of the videos seems to be spreading the word and sound of well temperaments. Might I make a suggestion--that you film yourself or another player with two pianos, side by side, with one tuned to ET and another to a well temp? This arrangement would open up all kinds of possibilities: you could demonstrate the difference between specific intervals, the difference in the key colors, and even play a brief piece in the well and in ET for a fuller demonstration. I think my favorite of these videos, after having seen\heard more of them, is of Adolfo Barabino playing the Chopin nocturne at http://www.youtube.com/user/latribe#p/search/10/ZH2IXOfnBqw . I can't imagine anyone seeing this video and not wanting to play the piano in this temperament. (And have a cd of these recordings...) On the other hand, seeing this performance along with a discussion in which specific intervals, and passages, were compared in ET and the well, would be still more revealing. One can of course find another recording of the piece in ET and immediately hear the difference, but that's not the same thing as having someone demonstrate the specific changes in sound on similar, side by side pianos.

I might be accused of selfishly asking you to create such a video under the guise of suggesting its educational value. Such an accusation would have a hint of accuracy. However, the video, or videos, would still have an enormous value for musicologists, for people wanting to demonstrate the difference in the tunings in a classroom, for tuners, and for players. Not a small task to request, or course. I only suggest it because you seem well-versed in and well-equipped for filming such performances. Could you do this tomorrow?

David,

Thank you for your comments. My primary consideration has always been that I tune and service pianos as my daily living. If people did not like what I do for them, I would not be in business. So, for me, any historical authenticity has never been a priority, except perhaps the general rule of what a well temperament is supposed to be.

Do my clients like the sound of what I do or do they not? If they don't, then whet can I do that would change that? If they do, then give them more of the same. The process to the EBVT III which I now use almost exclusively has been a long one but I have been using it nearly always for about four years. To me, it is the "one size fits all" that only ET is thought to be by most people.

You can easily access a wide variety of music performed on a nice piano from my website. It isn't all of the material I have and more will be added as I am able but there are many examples of many kinds of music there and it costs nothing to download or just listen to any example.

http://www.billbremmer.com/ebvt/

The basic aural tuning instructions can also be found on that page along with graphs by Jason Kanter of the basic properties.

Thanks for your interest!

Hi!

A lot to answer! But to get Adolfo back from Italy and film him on a piano tomorrow and then tune it to equal temperament and film him again, tomorrow, and then retune it as it should be . . . is a tall order . . . and essentially I tune the instrument so that it can withstand Liszt or Prokofiev http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KmDwrF7xq5Q without going out of tune during a performance . . . ! My leg is stretching to painful lengths . . .

However, I have put together two recordings by Adolfo that we did a fortnight apart which I hope may be illustrative and interesting. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hgA1-I5MfNY Sometimes its easy to think that one cannot hear the difference but the effect on the live audience was significant.

Pianos - I'm not entirely sure that the age of the piano makes a lot of difference - it's the length that inclines to the purity of the harmonics. I have never had great diffilculties with the long Bechstein at Hammerwood which is 1885 or so - the Bechstein showroom in London opening in 1886 may be something to do with the quality of the instrument, whilst the Emerson College (the Rudolph Steiner facility in Forest Row) instrument is a decade later. A 1905 Broadwood sounds much more like a modern instrument but has shorter strings too, and being unused to short strings, initially had great difficulty tuning the bass having experimented with harmonics. Like many, I have often tuned 10ths in the bass but this is possibly more valid in equal temperament. On the Hammerwood Bechstein I have been listening to Nasard and Larigot harmonics - 12ths and 19ths for pitches relating to perfect 5th intervals and Tierce harmonics - 17ths - for notes with perfect or near perfect 3rds. This has been quite successful at Hammerwood and I suspect that one can then get the instrument's harmonics to support the character of the tuning -
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pz0B0SwKpww
but this has failed miserably with short string instruments but interestingly giving more of the spirit of the fortepiano or square piano -
sounding charming at times
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tPLIanjtWlk
( - a concert where Adolfo deliberately trialled all the "worst" key)
but where the instrument jangles when all the strings are resonating -
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fGJAzBK5x84 (08:06 onwards in particular) Listen however to the beautiful accordance of the last note.
The Emerson piano is also very difficult to tune in the top two octaves on account of "Bechsteining" as a friend puts it, the strings emitting two notes very very close together instead of one.

Adolfo says that he does not like the Hammerwood instrument as he says it sounds nasal when overdriven - but this is probably more a matter of my tuning of odd harmonic accordances than the piano.

On the next tunings, I'll be using standard middle octave harmonics.

The inharmonicities of short strings certainly cause problems and probably cause rules to be rewritten in unequal tunings. Today I was tuning an old upright for a friend and the short bass strings caused the tuning of the mid octave harmonics of the bass strings to be at least a comma sharp over the tuning with the octave string. Were I to have flattened the bass string tuning (was it Rubenstein who said he liked bass strings tuned flat?) to accord with the immediate octave above, the middle keyboard harmonics would have jangled inutterably horribly.

Best wishes

David Pinnegar


(As a footnote, whilst trying to track down some Schubert in unequal temperament that I had recorded, I turned up http://temper.braybaroque.ie/ which I know from a friend's enthusiasm to be excellent, and was highly amused and not surprised to find that a particular tuning had been blinkeredly pushed by its originator yet again and resulting in http://temper.braybaroque.ie/lehman.htm. http://em.oxfordjournals.org/content/34/4/613.abstract is interesting - and this is why after a brief flirtation and trial I paid no further attention to it . . . and why wiser men didn't bother at all. A good idea is generally readily accepted and does not need such pushing. Something about "protesteth too much" comes to mind)

Dear Bill

Very very interesting. I have just listened to the D flat Rachmaninoff and the final chords are elegantly interesting and utterly delightful.

I'm sure that your clients probably don't notice they're not getting Equal Temperament - it's a very refined and sophisticated tuning you're doing - possibly similar to the 1880s "Broadwood's best"?

However for my purposes of introducing key colour to audiences I have needed something a little spicier (to say the least) so that people really notice . . . but of course not quite . . . I suspect that were I to have used EVBT, no-one would have noticed the difference.

It's a great pleasure to hear your examples - very beautiful piano and a very smooth effect.

Best wishes

David Pinnegar

It's wonderful to have these two temperaments (EBVT and what you're doing) discussed, not as competitive temperaments, but simply as different ways to approach what can be done.

(You can't drag Adolfo Barabino back to England on a moment's notice? A shame. Did you by any chance record what we hear in the videos to audio with a higher sampling rate?)

Dear Jake

Have you had time yet to hear the two halves of
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hgA1-I5MfNY ?

At the root of many of these recordings, however, is a very great and sensitive performer who tonally works with what he hears coming out of the instrument. I had the pleasure and privilege to sit in on a tutorial Adolfo gave to Miena Senada for the 4th Ballade
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RKOSVih7tls in performance
and
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fJT5Q6HooyA
the next day as I had been unsure of my tuning at Emerson . . .

What was interesting was the effect of the temperament in coming to understand the music as I pointed out on
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fJT5Q6HooyA


During the tutorial, the progression of these chords through their temperament colours suddenly became obviously significant. When a performer has practiced in such a way noting changes given by the temperament resulting in emphasis either by dynamics or speed, those characteristics of emphasis can be carried through to work on playing in equal temperament so that the experience in unequal temperament can have a benefit in perception in performance in an equal temperament venue.

When one looks at a temperament and sees departures of between 6 and 12 cents from equal, one knows that the effect will be interesting.

I hope that Adolfo will do some commercially released recordings with unequal temperament before long. His existing recordings however, http://www.adolfo-barabino.com/recordings_en.htm, are well worth tracking down.

His masterclasses are a truly exceptional opportunity for musicians - he does not teach how to play the piano - he teaches musicality. However, it's a matter of great regret and frustration that Steinway will neither tune their hire instruments to an unequal temperament nor allow another tuner to do so - and it's for such reason that Adolfo often brings students to my piano and to Emerson College in Forest Row nearby.

Whether the musical world is missing something greatly by concert Steinways always having to be in equal temperament is a matter perhaps for readers of this thread to judge.

Or just as I criticise the LB temperament for its uniqueness among temperaments as being the oddball, can I be criticised likewise for promoting the concept that piano music certainly up to the mid 19th century can be played on the more adventurous temperaments . . . and that such temperaments can do surprisingly little harm to subsequent musicality?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sboyVManGAk

Incidentally I tried to explain the effects of temperament upon composition in terms of rooted and unrooted chords
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nPvHq8HvTKg

For some time I have wanted to work with an organist with comprehensive knowledge of the repertoire in various temperaments less shocking than Meantone
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=54mE1hxAvyY
to see how far one can go
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=teVlrYJGKAE
to see what commonly loved organ repertoire might be precluded by specifiying an organ in an unequal temperament. Certainly the EBVT temperaments are excellent candidates . . . but can one go further into the temperament spectrum without precluding too much? If anyone knows an adventurous organist, it would be great to do something.



The recordings are all in CD quality but of course video compression mangles a lot of sound whatever the original quality.

Best wishes

David Pinnegar

Thank you, David,

I could not argue in the least with your statement. In fact, my experience with those who would scrutinize what I do, poised for attack, has been that as soon as the temperament was noticed, that is the point where it became unacceptable. Then, when people said they couldn't really tell what the difference was, they asked, "Why bother? Why not just tune ET?" Well, Kees answered that quite well.

There certainly is a difference, as subtle as it may be. Some have even said that it still goes too far but I am quite satisfied at this point that it goes about as far as it can go without going too far for all but some of the most squeamish of performing artists. For them, I have yet an even milder WT that I designed myself but have not yet published anywhere.

Consider this post and follow up that occurred some time back about Ravel's "La Vallé des Cloches". Ron K., who is interested in Non-ET's seemed to be bothered by what he considered to be an excessive amount of beats. I really think this had to do more with the amount of stretch I used, especially in the Bass than it did with temperament.

To me, it is the most stunning and moving example of the piece I could find anywhere. It is stunning because of the beats and the other examples are mediocre to downright bland and lifeless because of lack of clarity and beats.

Please tell me your impressions. I plan to get this example on my website soon but you can experience it here and now:

(See the 9th post on this page and follow the links therein.)

http://www.pianoworld.com/forum/ubbthreads.php/topics/1387799/109.html

(David: I hope you will not think that I'm wading into waters that are not mine to wade in, but I think you've already recorded Adolfo Barabino's new album in unequal temperaments. To me, the performances you have are absolutely ready to be released as they are.

They are live performances, so there may be a cough here and there, but that's to be expected in a live performance. They don't seem to have any compression or normalizing, and that's to their advantage. They sound as the performance would sound in a small hall if the listener was sitting close by, so there's no need for compression, etc. I can understand that he or his label might want to later do other recordings in a more controlled environment, but these stand on their own.)

Dear Bill

One of the problems is that people expect a perfection to machine standards . . . and when they notice the temperament, although they say it's unacceptable, it's only unacceptable within the narrow tolerances of mechanical quality control and only unacceptable to people who do not want to see into a new dimension, for it is not understood, and who wish to stay within the safety zone of dark glasses that reduce everything to black and white! They are frightened of colour.

'Scuse haste

Best wishes

David P

Dear Jake

This is a great compliment both to Adolfo and to my live recordings - thanks - but the problem nowadays is that in order to have an impact on the musical scene one really does need a label with both distribution and marketing sewn up . . .

I wonder if any major brand would like to take up the challenge of Adolfo unequally tempered?

Best wishes

David P

A major label should.

Bill Bremmer's insight seems pertinent here---the term "unequal temperament" causes unease since it suggests something ragged or erratic. The term "well-tempered" tends to be more popular in the US, perhaps because of the historical precedent of Bach. Of course, "unequal temperament" is broader, since it encompasses meantone, etc. But if one is mainly playing a well temperament, the more limited term might be more appealing, suggesting "well-tuned" instead of "unequally tuned."

But to the larger point: Maybe the tail needs to wag the dog. In the US, at least, small independent labels are growing in popularity, since many large labels don't want to risk anything that doesn't sound like last year's music.

Hi!

I think formerly in this thread I have referred to "rooted" and "unrooted" chords and possibly gave the wrong YouTube video: it's in
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nPvHq8HvTKg that hopefully I describe it usefully.

Best wishes

David Pinnegar

Perhaps you can try the LaripS label.

Kees

Yes - problem is that Hcab temperament doesn't show up anything approaching the Chopin colours!

Best wishes

David P

Mind my asking how you expand the temperament to the bass and upper treble? Are there specific checks that you focus on--octaves or M3's or M5's or M12's, etc? One thing I notice is how much the treble sings without getting overly bright. The overall tone is very even but musical.

Very enjoyable watching and listening to these videos David....I was particularly taken with this one....beautifully played...and I love the sound of Chopin with this temperament! Thank You for posting those.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9zxNrQuxfNY&feature=related

You had mentioned you enjoyed the piano and the Rachmaninoff in D Flat on Bill's website. That was my piano...it's a rebuilt 1925 Mason & Hamlin 7ft Grand.

Dear Jake

How very flattering your question is . . . as I'm not professionally trained but have been tuning now for concerts for approaching 30 years. As a result I'm not fully acquainted with professional terminology.

However, as you ask, the following is the methodology of how I came to be tuning as I do.

In my teens I rescued and rebuilt a pipe organ which I tuned by ear to Werkmeister III as it seemed to be easy to tune and good to experiment with. I was then a member of BIOS, the British Institute of Organ Studies and this was a time when unequal temperaments were being rediscovered and publicised. However I fell out of love with it on account of its rendition of A flat major.

For years since childhood I had watched our local piano tuner, Alex Godin, to whom I am most indebted and who taught me a lot whenever he visited in my teens.

Of course he tuned initially by ear but eventually for speed he'd bring a machine of a similar appearance to
[img:center]http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=31145314&l=298097e6c1&id=1265258549[/img]
It had a built in microphone and he explained the knobs, explaining about stretching the octave and told me that one increased the frequency of the octaves above treble C at one beat per second per octave, and that this machine did it automagically when one adjusted the knobs for 5, 6 and 7.

When we started concerts in Sussex, it was too far for Alex to travel and I started doing it myself, generating and measuring the frequencies for equal temperament and observing the waveforms on a dual beam oscilloscope. This gave me a visual impression of the behaviour of strings - and particularly the behaviour of exact unisons in the trichords. With the arrival of the Sinclair Spectrum computer I wrote a programme to generate the frequencies and I would work both by machine and by ear.

At that stage, I would probably have tuned bass to exact frequencies, although often I'd have aimed for a compromise with harmony with the 10ths.

The 1991 concert of Jan Pytel Zak
http://www.jungleboffin.com/mp4/jan-zak/
(I'd love to welcome him to England again but don't have contact details - his tours in Britain were arranged by the late Bob Maciejewski) would have been tuned in such a way.

The Bechstein came to me at 444 and over the years I have dropped to 440. It's a beautfully gentle angle of pull between the aggreff and the pin which is a great assistance to learning how to set the pin. I would have tuned treble A to 880 and then when reaching C gone back to A and set the computer to carry on the sequence as from 881. The octave above would have set the C as from A = 1763 and likewise upwards.

Progressing into electronic tuners when not using TuneLab97 on the computer, it being a pain to bother with a cumbersome laptop, I'd have simply switched from 440 to 441 upon hitting the C above Treble C and 442 in the octave above.

However, none of my work is done without using ears as well.

Before the Bechstein we were loaned a Steinway and I didn't have top octave problems in tuning by ear there, but I have always found the Bechstein top two octaves a challenge, preferring to use a machine or especially the computer to get an accurate frequency indication.

In recent years I progressed through a good tuner with a accurate LED display indicating cent measurements and more recently a Korg OT120 with which I usually set the scale. It's very helpful on harpsichords.

I normally tuned octaves downwards note by note from the central octave, sometimes seeking assistance with speed from a tuner. However bass responsiveness is not good and ears have had to be paramount.

The Hammerwood Bechstein has never given me problems of inharmonicity from the bass and my octaves and 10ths practice always worked. However, going to a Baby Grand Broadwood and the Emerson Bechstein, the short strings posed challenges and I had to start experimenting. Adolfo talked at some stage of specifically tuning to harmonics - so I experimented at Emerson in particular tuning to 5th based harmonics in the central octave where the temperament gives perfect 5ths and 3rd based harmonics falling in the central octave where the temperament gives perfect thirds or very near. This was intended to reinforce the effect of the temperament but the results I believe to be disquieting and on full forte, sounding akin to a square fortepiano. In desperation on the last tuning in November I used TuneLab97 having built up an inharmonicity curve.

Years ago I acquired a machine like Alex Godin's, the Vista, but of course this fell into disuse with the onset of unequal temperaments, although I had used it using the cent dial adjustments on a square piano - a pain.

Over the past month I have retuned the Vista to the unequal temperament, adding capacitors as necessary to the electronics
[img:center]http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=31145938&l=24b88ebabc&id=1265258549[/img]
and am starting to test it again. Thermal effects on the variable capacitors are giving troubles, and I can't go down a full semitone for 415 when I need to . . . and am worried about putting in a switchable capacitor for C to take it down a semitone without seeing a circuit diagram as altering the basic frequency may make a proportionate change to the proportions for the other notes and put out the temperament.

This machine relies on the crystal mic to reject low frequencies and it has a phase locked loop to pick out only the central octave. This means that it automatically listens to the mid octave octave based harmonic of the bass overwound strings . . . and that is really just what is needed to create the most harmonious sound.

The upper octaves are switched in - so you get to the upper C, switch octave and turn the knob till the 1/4 phase rotating display is still - this means that it's tuned to the octave harmonic, and likewise the further octaves so it is properly adjusting for inharmonicity rather than my former cavalier addition of a beat or two per octave.

A friend was professional tuner to Glyndebourne Opera House and we banter about temperament. He loves his Steinway in perfect exact equal temperament but has kindly restrung the Emerlich Betsy
http://www.jungleboffin.com/mp4/jill-crossland-unequal-tempered-fortepiano/ (as it was before restringing and nearly a tone down)
and we're bringing it into Kirnberger as an experiment. I'm very green-eyed towards his TLA Cts5 . . . !

Perhaps I should apologise for the long winded reply to your simple question but in order to do what I'm doing now, I have come on a journey which, perhaps if you like aspects of what you hear, will make it easier for you to do likewise.

However, I have been blessed with a kind piano. Another secret, however, is that when local tuners came in from time to time, against my better judgement, it would always go out of tune quickly. Instead of setting the scale by ear and requiring every string to be altered on every tuning, using machine assisted tuning has enabled me to set the machine to the piano, keeping it anywhere and where it wants to be between 440 and 444, and thereafter for most tunings except annual tunings, to tune only those strings that needed attention, leaving the rest alone.

The importance of this was brought home to me after Jan Zak performed the Liszt and the Albeniz recorded in the link above remarked to me that he had rarely played that programme on a piano that had survived the programme in tune . . .

Best wishes

David P

Hi!

It's a very real pleasure to know that these videos and Adolfo Barabino's playing is giving such enjoyment. Thank you for expressing it - I had believed that we are doing something special but have been very dispirited as our concerts are not always blessed with large audiences.

Listening to that clip suggested that there is something more to this - whereas as professional tuners you are tuning multiple instruments, the piano at Hammerwood and I have a near monogomous relationship and over a quarter of a century I know every string and how it responds; it becomes a love affair with the instrument and this may influence what I'm listening for when I tune. Moving to the Emerson Bechstein gave me that similarity which then was skewed . . . and that has resulted in those recordings which are interesting but in some ways strange.

One of my favourite pieces in the UT is the raindrop prelude. The first two note chord rings like a drop of water on a tin roof and thereafter the chords shape shift, like the variations one sees in mist and the clouds moving in the sky, and then the sun comes through the dark clouds. etc etc .

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xsn9g4pS2RA is at Emerson although I think I may prefer the tonality of the Hammerwood instrument.

However, the results should be repeatable, no matter what the instrument . . .

Your Mason and Hamlin is very fine and I think that although Bill's temperament is very charming and refined (and a truly universal substitute for equal temperament - certainly far from anywhere near objectionable even in the remotest key), you might start experimenting with the stronger flavours. Perhaps if I have demonstrated anything, it's to show that people can do so safely, throwing caution to the wind and leaving behind the groups of 4 and 6 cent curry . . . :-)

Incidentally, Ross Duffin tells me that Jonathan Bellman at Northern Colorado has been researching Chopin temperament and apparently thinks he has discovered Chopin's preference . . . It will be most interesting to find if he veers towards the sort of temperament I'm using or whether he's in a radically different direction.

My personal feeling is that the sort of strength of temperament we are hearing in my series of recordings is on the spectrum of a scale of success. Whether it goes towards meeting Schubart's descriptive report and whether the characteristics describe each of Chopin's 24 preludes is an interesting pair of questions.

Whether it be solved by scholarly academic research or by experiment in performance and assessment by our ears will be fun to experience.

It can be so much also a matter of interpretation but perhaps we need 100 students to listen to the 24 preludes in equal temperament and comment on evoked emotions. Then see if they match to Schubart . . . _If_ there is a link, we need to perform the set of 24 in each of the common varieties of temperament to see then which match best.

I'm very aware that the French spectrum of temperaments notably D'Alembert, Rameau and French Ordinaire may give rather different results to the Germanics. Certainly of http://www.jungleboffin.com/mp4/jill-crossland-unequal-tempered-fortepiano/
whilst Mozart came through beautifully effectively, I felt no affinity of Rameau.

With French and Polish connexions, Chopin could have gone either way . . . ??

Best wishes

David P