“White. Like a clean piece of paper, like uncarved ivory, all is white when the story begins.”
-Daniel Mason, author, “The Piano Tuner”
When Cecile Licad arrived in Manila from New York Friday night (March 15), the next thing she did Saturday morning was to check the full grand piano at the Met and confer with her piano tuner, Danny Lumabi who has been tuning pianos for 50 years.
The full grand is a product of the Fazioli Pianos founded by the engineer and pianist Paolo Fazioli. Its brochure highlights “passion for music, great artisanship, continuous technological research and strict material selection.”
For now, its regular tuner is Danny Lumabi who conferred with Licad at the Met. His parents happen to be from San Andres and Tarisoy, Virac, Catanduanes.
Lumabi, says Licad likes mellow, brilliant sound. “She is very particular not just with the sound but the touch. The keys should be equally done underneath so that she can control the instrument even with closed eyes.
The sound should be equal in the bass or treble parts. It involves constant adjustment of hammerhead and a lot of revoicing.”
The tuner said the pianist would even request him to go around the hall to check the piano sound by himself.
“She is very particular about how the sound bounces back to the audience. She is very smart and very frank.”
Lumabi was with Licad when she performed at the historic Paoay Church in Ilocos Norte in 2006 and a day
later in a seaside Sitio Remedios resort owned by Dr. Joven Cuanang.
In the Currimao outreach concert, Lumabi dived underneath the Steinway grand when its pedal gave way
in the middle of a Mozart sonata. He quickly fixed it to the amazement of the audience.
In the 2018 All-Chopin Recital Tour in Iloilo, Science City of Munoz, Nueva Ecija, Baguio City and Roxas City, the piano tuner was Alexander Comoda, whose late father Romy Comoda also tuned the piano at the Pundaquit Festival Hall in San Antonio, Zanbales during the performance of Licad with cellist Antonio Meneses in 1995.
Comoda, who is now based in Dubai, United Arab Emirates as a full-time concert piano tuner, recalls fixing
the 1929 New York Steinway grand at the Nelly Garden in Iloilo City a day before the concert. “Her name alone speaks volume and that made me very nervous. Matinding pawis at kaba ang inabot ko on the first day. She is very straight to the point when making suggestions especially in terms of the touch, the regulations and the state of the piano pedals.”
The younger Comoda, who learned how to tune from his late father, Romy, started tuning pianos since 2003 and went full time in 2010 after finishing Bachelor of Science in Nursing.
Said he: “Piano tuning allows you to meet music loving families whose pianos have rich history from one generation to another. Some wanted their old pianos restored because of the memories those pianos keep. Of course, I went full time into piano tuning to preserve the little legacy my father left.”
No one knows exactly when the first piano tuners arrived in the country.
But to be sure, they came before or after the turn of the last century when a German Benedictine nun named Sister Baptista Battig introduced the first formal piano lessons in the Philippines.
When Manila was still known as “the Milan of the Orient,” the city already had its share of singers who were
educated in Italy and an equally good share of pianists who made a career here and abroad.
Nena del Rosario Villanueva is considered the country’s first piano prodigy who studied at Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia. In her league is a sterling generation of pianists that include Benjamin Tupaz, Jose Contreras, Reynaldo Reyes, Ernesto Lejano and Maria Luisa Vito, among others.
Surely, all these excellent pianists cannot do without a good piano tuner.
The piano tuner of Rowena Arrieta, the first Filipino Tchaikovsky Laureate in Moscow, during her Baguio City outreach concert was the late Jun Jacela. When he passed away, his nephew, Michael Jacela took over and serviced pianos owned by music teachers. (He, too, had passed away.)
Moreover, the piano odyssey of Cecile Licad is far more definitive and spectacular than the rest of her colleagues young and old.
Like Villanueva, Licad also studied at Curtis and became the school’s star pupil — like China’s Lang Lang and Yuja Wang.
With good pianists, the demand for good pianos — and good piano tuners — was understandable.
In the case of Licad, she asks for many shades and nuances of sounds from her piano.
In one concert, she looks for a sound perfect for her Chopin and Schumann.
She may demand another piano good for Rachmaninoff and Tchaikovsky. She will also need a special unique sound for her Brahms.
In yet another engagement, she will look for a distinct sound ideal for Bartok and Shostakovich.
All of these sound requirements can only come with a good piano tuner.
When Licad performed at the Santuario de San Antonio Church in Forbes Park one Friday night in October 2016, she brought with her a 9-foot Hamburg Steinway which is rarely seen in Manila’s piano stores.
The piano which traveled all the way from New York came with a piano tuner named Ricard de la Rosa, who is president of the New York-based Pro Piano.
When the pianist borrowed the Steinway grand of presidential daughter Irene M. Araneta (the piano was a gift to her by the eminent pianist Van Cliburn), the piano was tuned by Raymond Lim who is in the league of another much sought after tuner, Iggy Tuazon, who services piano owners in exclusive subdivisions.
Earlier, Pablo Umali (father of Arnel Umali) tuned upright pianos when I opened the 1992 summer music festival in Catanduanes.
The late Romy Comoda –father of Alex Comoda – also tuned upright pianos used in the Cagayan Valley Music Festival which I opened in Ilagan, Isabela in 2001.
He also tuned the piano used by Licad at St. Paul University in Tuguegarao City in Cagayan in 2002 and
2003.
The younger Comoda also tuned the upright pianos when the summer music festival resumed in Catanduanes in 2013.
When the Licad-Meneses duo performed in Bacolod in the mid90s, tuning was made by Ricardo Garcia who is also the tuner of pianist and former CCP president Raul Sunico.
For now, the Manila Pianos – one of the name piano dealers in Manila and venue of regular concert seasons — keeps a stable of piano tuners at its beck and call.
Ray Sison of ROS Music Center used to keep a stable of piano tuners some of whom trained in Germany
when he became distributor of Bosendorfer pianos in Manila.
Sison’s stable of piano technicians went beyond tuning.
One of them, Arnel Umali, is a certified piano tuner and technician who trained in the Bosendorfer factory in Vienna, Austria
Said he: “Good tuning lasts longer through careful repetition and special technique. We also offer good regulation which restores factory settings of all moving parts of the piano. These results in a piano that responds easily with bigger sound and can give pianist more enjoyable performance.”
(It was a Bosendorfer piano that Licad used in Kawit, Cavite the venue for which burned down before the
concert. Piano had to be immediately transferred to a safe adjacent venue.)
From Sison’s estimate, there is a piano (upright or baby grand) in every household in the class A and B category.
Outside the concert circuit, piano dealers remind you that you need piano tuners to preserve your instrument and –according to a Manila Pianos briefing – to avoid costly repairs in the future.
A piano dealer’s brochure describes piano tuning as “the act of making minute adjustments to the tensions of the strings of a piano to properly align the intervals between their tones so that the instrument is in tune. The meaning of the term in tune in the context of piano tuning is not simply a particular fixed set of pitches.”
Among others, the brochure says piano tuning requires an assessment of the interaction among notes,
which is different for every piano, thus in practice requiring slightly different pitches from any theoretical standard. Pianos are usually tuned to a modified version of the system called equal temperament. In all systems of tuning, every pitch may be derived from its relationship to a chosen fixed pitch usually pegged at A440.
Connected with the world’s greatest pianists, Pro Piano’s De la Rosa remains a trusted name in business of piano supply and tuning in the last 45 years.
His Hamburg Steinway — which he tuned himself in one CCP concert in 2016 and 17 of Licad attests to the
high degree of professionalism in the piano business.
Music specialists opine that through the years, piano tuners have acquired a rare capability to absorb a specialized form of listening.
As music appreciation improves, the better an instrument should sound.
Concertgoers notice that an orchestra doesn’t begin performance without making sure all instruments are
tuned.
True enough, the instruments in the orchestra are like strings in a piano.
In the end, you realize that before great music begins, the elements — upon which the harmonies are built — must be aligned.
Indeed, it is unthinkable to have a good piano performance without a good piano tuner.
Music lovers had a taste of Lumabi’s work when Cecile Licad performed with the PPO under Maestro Grzegorz Nowak at the Manila Metropolitan Theater.
The March 19 Women’s Month Invitational Concert was spearheaded by Sen. Loren Legarda in cooperation with the NCCA, the CCP and the Philippine Philharmonic Society, Inc. now headed by former CCP President Margie Moran Floirendo.