FROM FERGUSON ’ S HALLS
HOW YAMAHA, GOOGLE, AND PROFESSOR ALEXANDER BRAGINSKY BROUGHT TECHNICAL WIZARDRY AND COMPETITIVE INTEGRITY WORLDWIDE By Katie Dohman
Around the turn of the century—that’s 1999—Professor Alexander Braginsky was dreaming about a better way to compete. “The more I went out as a judge, and participated in the process, the less I liked it,” he says. A competition where a judge had a student in the show would be the final straw. “It became clear to me that the only way to change the things that I don’t like in the system is to create something of my own. Because you cannot go around to other’s people’s events and competitions changing their rules. Like it or not! If you want a good dinner, cook,” he says. The first thing he thought of? He needed the best jury in the world to judge the participants. Among other people, he wanted to recruit pianist Yefim Bromfman. Bromfman was interested but he was in Japan. He told Braginsky if he could bring the recital to him, he’d do it. Oh, sure. Well, a lightbulb indeed went off at that moment.
Photo provided
Braginsky had been, for many years, playing Yamaha pianos and fascinated by the technological advances Yamaha was continuing to bring to the market.
A VIRTUAL AUDTION IN ACTION.
8 UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA SCHOOL OF MUSIC
Now he had access to a Yamaha piano that by all accounts seemed like a regular grand piano. And it is, but this version has this fiber optics built in. Through this technology, it registers every single motion that happens inside the grand piano—2,000 positions of any given key and 256 positions of the pedals. Then it records it, and plays it back. So when it plays it back, it’s not a recording, analog or digital, it’s the piano. Playing as you played it. Braginsky asked Yamaha if it were possible for Bromfman to hear the competition in Japan, no matter where the contestants
