Pianomania

I've always enjoyed watching an artist at the top of the game, and while the musicians here, Lang Lang, Aimard et al are all at the top of their games for sure, it is Stephan Knüpfer who is the true artist here. Here is a man who knows his pianos at such an intimate level he is able to translate the musicians incredibly specific and intangible demands in to reality.

This film is just captivating from beginning to end, watching Stephan tweak, poke, dust, tune, twist and thump the pianos like only a true master of his craft can do.

Highly recommended.

Stefan Knüpfer is a piano tuner who works for Steinway (very popular manufacturer). He spends a great deal of time working with pianists making sure that the pianos they play on sound just right before performances. Pianomania masterfully shows us the tension between Stefan and Pierre- Laurent Aimard, a renown French pianist, who seemingly can never be satisfied. We are given a look into the complex requests Knüpfer must take on as he tries to understand the needs of performers and their instruments.

Piano tuners are a rare breed of person, of which Stefan is no exception. This fragile-looking man with rounded glasses who lives a stress-filled life of running from one performance hall to the next on a daily basis. He is the perfect example of someone who works behind the scenes, often going unnoticed, never recognized for the importance of his work to the performances viewed by many.

"...it (piano) has to be continuously remixed so that what is produced right there, the quality of the sound conforms with what the artist imagines. That is the difficulty that needs to be constantly addressed."

The film is much like an episode of "Worlds Toughest Jobs". As Stefan mentions, it is trying to create a sound from the piano that is exactly like the sound that these performers have in their minds. Taking something that is obscure or intangible and turning this into reality. I found the language barrier to be fascinating considering the performers he works with come from all walks of land. It is almost comic how this adds to the already daunting task of interpreting what is being asked of him.

Pianomania is a perfect example of why I continue to watch documentaries. They not only offer a voice to those who have none, but can also provide a view into the world of those who may not care for one. That Stefan finds beauty in everything about his job makes this all the more beautiful to watch.

The technician and pianists studied up close in Pianomania, a 2009 Austrian documentary, are searching for the perfect sound. They always get close, but I am not sure any of them well confess to ever actually hearing it. Stefan Knupfer is Steinway & Sons master technician based out of Vienna. He works at the Vienna concert house tuning, re-tuning, breaking apart and re-constructing grand pianos. Working closely with the most famous and skilled pianists in the world including Lang Lang and Pierre-Laurent Aimard, they have intense discussions concerning tone, flavor, color, air, etc… It turns out that grand pianos each have their own respective flavor, shape, and feeling. Is the sound round or too round? Is it full, thick, thin, light, or heavy? In Pianomania, Stefan describes the piano as the perfect music machine. Its full volume can reach 4000 in a single hall. Conversely, another technician raises the question of just how much of a musical instrument it really is. It takes three people just to move it around and if you draw on a particular string you will slice your hand open.

Pierre-Laurent Aimard will record Bach concertos in one year at the concert hall. A full year before these recordings, Stefan is already hard at work on it. He travels to Hamburg to painstakingly select the back-up piano in case the first one is not to Pierre's liking. He goes over to the Hofburg to consult harpsichord and clavichord experts because he feels he must know their sounds better. He almost self destructs when new hammerheads arrive (the parts which hit the piano strings) and they are 0.7mm too skinny, a fact he can tell just by looking at them.

Throughout the year, Stefan works hand-in-hand with all of these accomplished solo pianists to find the sound they are so desperately trying to describe. Tension frequently arises when they either cannot understand one another or when a piano sounds amazing to one person but like garbage to another. Well into the film, it is not odd to hear phrases such as "the tone is fine, it is what is in the tone which sounds off." Listening to the musicians play after they have finally decided the piano is ready is a real pleasure. There are extended sequences devoted to them. The camera work veers off every now and then though to try and match the sounds such as filming clouds reflecting on water or blurry neon lights. Those shots do not work very well but they are few and far between. Also, once the Bach recordings begin a year later, they can become quite tedious as you will see microphones adjusted and re-adjusted and Stefan running up and down the stairs repeatedly between the stage and the recording booth. This conveys exactly what it is supposed to, that recording major works of classical music is extremely challenging, but it also not very amusing for the audience either.

I recommend Pianomania to those who appreciate classical music and would like to peek behind the curtain a bit. Beware to those of you who do not seem interested by these descriptions, you will probably be bored.

There have been great documentaries about Steinway. And great concerto registrations of many a keyboard giants. And this should have been a documentary about a great piano tuner. Stefan Knüpfer is a great piano tuner. Steinway is the grandfather of grand pianos. Lang and Brendel and Aimard are great musicians.For any music lover this should have been a shoo-in, njet? Alas, no. Tuners, instruments and players move in the mysterious (concert) halls of sounds. If they're good you can hear it. But the addition of images (and edit the whole in a coherent manner) is entirely up to the documentary maker.

It says something when the most exciting parts of this documentary are the transport and setting up of those grand behemoths, and seeing Knüpfer at work. But the endless talks and takes about sound and its interpretation are only interesting for the first or second time. And as Knöpfer himself is a rather self-effacing guy, you're not drawn into his world as with people like Glen Gould or Leonard Bernstein (the "making" of the Goldberg Variations, or the "making of Westside Story).

A good documentary maker should have seen this coming, otherwise "It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury. Signifying nothing."

This movie follows Steinway Piano Tuner Stefan Knüpfer around the various assignments of his work. The movie underlines the point that a piano is a complicated, tricky instrument with multiple facettes in the sound that only the skilled tuner can reveal. Mr. Knüpfer is the central funny point in this movie, him being a positive person delighted by his craft, and he is fully apt at conveying this love of his work on screen. My only grudge with this movie is that it focuses at length on the people that play the piano, where I would have expected to see him work, eg. tune the piano. The end credits of the film use many of those image sequences I would really love to see in the main movie.