„Feel the Pores“
Guenther Piesk
When I was accepted to join the orchestra academy of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra after an audition in 1986, solo-bassoonist Guenther Piesk became my teacher and mentor. Mister Piesk had been a member of the philharmonics before the era Karajan and he was a great teacher equipped with lots of knowledge and a wide variety of experience and anecdotes from his times at the Philharmonic Orchestra starting in the late 1940s. Until 1988 he taught me all the steps how manually to manufacture double reeds for Bassoon. “You have to learn to feel the pores in the wood”, was his credo as well as “you can’t glue back on what has been sliced off”.
When I moved from the Berlin Philharmonics to join the Berlin Symphonic Orchestra he gave me a very special reed-shaper with two different shaped sides. Until today nobody could tell me how old this reed-shaper is, or by whom it was built, nevertheless it has supplied me with excellent results over the last 28 years, so that now I would like to share my experience. For me this means to offer You my double-reeds to buy. All the reed-shapers made by the German company Rieger which I choose for the Fagottrohrmanufaktur Berlin are shaped similar like Mister Pieske’s special reed-shaper