They have the best seats in the house. They’re part of the show, but they say no words, nor do they bow.
Page-turners are the ghostly stewards of the piano who work to remain invisible while ensuring a sparkling performance.
“It’s the most thankless job, because if you are noticed in any way, you’ve failed,” says professional pianist Anton Nel, an artist-faculty member this summer at The Aspen Music Festival and School.
Some go as far as calling page-turning a profession. Many acclaimed concert halls even have a stable of experienced turners on stand-by for high-profile concerts.
Not really a vocation, it’s more a skill budding pianists and others fluent in reading music are called upon to use when the need arises.
Pay can range from nothing at all to a few hundred dollars per concert. But innovations of the 21st century are hinting that page-turners might soon be replaced by tablets.
Pros and pitfalls
Since the days of virtuosos like Franz Liszt — who heightened the levels of piano performances by playing without sheet music more than 150 years ago. The predicament persists: to play with a score, or not to play with a score?
Many top-notch pianists execute solo and symphonic performances sans sheet music. But for most chamber performances (a pianist collaborating with anywhere from one to seven others), which are ubiquitous at Colorado summer festivals such as Aspen and Bravo! Vail, it’s common for pianists to enlist turners.
Sitting on a musician’s left side, a skilled turner stands when the pianist makes it to end of the current page; then, pinches the upper, right-hand corner of the page with the thumb and forefinger of their left hand; and turns — quietly — on the pianist’s nod or eyebrow raise.
They also know when not to turn. A pianist might prefer to turn near the end of a movement or during a collaborator’s pianissimo phrase.
Utmost attention is required when turning, almost as if you’re performing the piece yourself, says Aspen’s assistant artistic administrator Steven Slaff, who has turned pages for 12 years.
Like anything else involving human error, there are risks: turning two pages at once, knocking the music off the stand, working with a score that doesn’t stay open, battling gusts of wind (if outdoors), and so on.
There’s also the thrill of repeats, which call for musicians to replay certain sections of a piece. Sometimes this requires the page-turner to flip back several pages in one fell swoop.
One of the problems here is scores differ depending on the publisher and edition. Elmer Booze, the page-turner in residence at the Newport Music Festival, tries to rehearse with the pianist beforehand — otherwise the only information he receives comes minutes before the recital in the dressing room.
Booze has turned pages for more than 50 years and might be the closest thing to a professional page-turner there is. He’s experienced everything imaginable onstage, and has turned for some of the most lauded pianists, including Jorge Bolet, Leon Fleisher, Menahem Pressler and Rudolf Serkin.
“I have to sit calm on the stage, without any aggravation or what have you,” Booze said on the phone recently between East Coast performances. He has to play the bluff, even if he’s not feeling that way. “We feed off each other’s energy.”
Page-turning, of course, also has its perks. Composer Alan Fletcher, CEO and president of the Aspen Music Festival and School, says the duty can serve as a networking and mentoring opportunity for younger charges.
A page-turner has the closest access to a pianist imaginable: from preparing backstage to watching their technique onstage, to seeing how they react to a performance offstage.
Some Aspen piano students concede turning isn’t necessarily without its rewards or opportunities, but it’s considered a burden by many. After all, aspiring pianists crave time to practice and perform their own repertoire.
Technology’s role
Although they’ve been utilized for centuries, the legacy of these unsung heroes is nebulous.
“We’re seeing people here using iPads,” says Fletcher.
Nel is one of the pianists Fletcher is referring to. For about a year, the pianist has been using the iPad app forScoreto upload his music to a tablet, on which he can make notations and turn the page himself either with the flick of a finger or the tap of Bluetooth pedals.
Nel primarily uses the iPad to practice on, as it’s lighter to carry around than a stack of scores — some of which can contain upward of 100 pages. He’s used it in performance before, but once the device nearly made things go awry.
During a world premiere in South Africa, Nel was testing the iPad when suddenly a calendar notification popped up.
Nel jabbed frantically at the screen to dismiss the obstacle. Other potential problems he noted from the performance: battery life, visibility.
Booze says there needs to be a device that makes turning from beginning to end seamless — without having to fuss over the drama of repeats and turn-backs.
“Right now they’re very crucial,” Andrew Welch, an Aspen piano student, says of the onstage assistants. “But hopefully, the death of the page-turner will be like the death of the typewriter: bloodless and swift.”
“In my lifetime, there will always be page-turners, because there will always be people who are not willing to take the risk of the technology,” Fletcher adds. “It’s true it’s a risk to have a human making a human error, but it’s also a risk to have a machine where anything can happen.”
Sean Fitz-Gerald: 303-954-1211, sfitz-gerald@denverpost.com or twitter.com/srkfitzgerald
