Hi all,

What do you all play when you first sit down at a piano to try, in an exam situation, or just before a competition to see what it's like?
Just out of interest.

Whatever I can vaguely play to some degree from memory at the time, so at the moment it would probably be a Satie Gnossienne, but a couple of months ago it would have been something completely different.

I don't play anything pieces, but I do have a couple of things that I always do to test out pianos:

I play a scale up and down a few times in the mid range, varying crescendo and diminuendo to gauge the lightness/heaviness of the touch of the keys.

Then I'd probably play the last few bars of a Visions Fugitives piece that really needs all the sonority of the bass to sound good - so that gives me an idea of the bass sound (some pianos that are not in good condition are either really dry in the bass and sound percussive, or are really spongey and soak up all the richness of the sound and dampen it. Having said that, these traits can be found in good quality new pianos.)

I'd then test the pedals - how deep you need to press them to get the full release, how responsive they are, whether they are very shallow or if you have to press them heavily, whether they work well at different depressions or whether you need to lift the damper up completely to clear any sound, etc (this is important, because I played on a piano recently where you had to completely release the damper pedal - for the piece I was playing, I often don't lift it completely to keep the bass line in, but with this piano, if you did that, all the tones and phrases would have blurred. It made the piece very bright and dry, but it couldn't be helped as the piano couldn't half-pedal!)

I might tinker a little tune in the very high treble to see how echoey it is (very common on some pianos), or play a short section of the piece I am playing that might especially need to be played differently depending on the touch of the keys, but that is about it.

Although it takes a while to describe, it this all only takes a minute maximum, which is often all you have at the start of a competition or before an exam I'd imagine. If it was a full performance where you had a lot of preparation time beforehand, then of course I would practise my pieces to get them right on the piano!

My test peice on a strange piano is the opening few bars of the 2nd Movement of Apassionata - a nice test of bass tone

Mole