Hi all -- I just posed this quandary to one of you off-list, and then
thought perhaps others of you would like to comment. I went to the
Newport Music (used to be called 'Romantic Music') Festival
yesterday. In the whole 60-concert festival they are doing TWO that
have any Baroque at all in them, with pianists playing Scarlatti and
Bach on Yamaha piano, Pianists accompanying Pergolesi and
Allessandro Scarlatti and Vivaldi on Yamaha Piano, the Albinioni
adagio with a pianist on "Organ (Yamaha Clavinova)". Also a Bach
flute sonata and as Marcello viola Sonata with a pianist playing
'harpsichord (Yamaha Clavinova)'. This is a well-funded festival for
the extremely well-heeled. All their performers are from either New
York or Europe, they don't make the slightest attempt to save, say,
travel expenses by hiring local, or even Boston, performers. They
could have afforded a real harpscihord or a parta-organ (or even
scheduled the concerts in one of the many beautiful churches in
Newport with fine organs), they just didn't think it mattered.

Which brings up my quandary -- I was there as the guest of the
host for the concert, who wanted me to check out the venue for its
suitablility for a harpsichord concert some time. It was a lovely
place, a large high-ceilinged uncarpeted cement-walled courtyard
with wall-to-wall skylights; and in some sense it has good
acoustics, but there is an awfully big buzz from the climate control
system. Which didn't make a horribly big difference to the piano
recital, Yamaha concerts grands are LOUD. But I cringe a bit at
what that buzz will do to my harpscihord. On the other hand, these
are people who apparently don't realise how superior to a clavinova
a real instrument is. Do you think I am likely to be able to show
them, in this venue? or not? I doubt that turning off the system will
be feasible, the windows don't open and the building will not be
empty at the time I play.

Judy