“As a piano tuner, Verne Edquist … prepared the pianos for well-known musicians, among them Gina Bachauer, Victor Borge, Duke Ellington, Arthur Rubinstein, Andras Schiff, Rudolf Serkin and Liberace,” writes James Barron in Thursday’s (10/1) New York Times. “But he was chiefly known as the personal tuner for the famously eccentric virtuoso Glenn Gould, whose pianos Mr. Edquist nurtured from the 1960s to the early ‘80s, making exacting adjustments that shaped the sounds heard on Gould’s recordings. Mr. Edquist died on Aug. 27 in Toronto. He was 89. His son Carl said the cause was kidney failure. Tuning pianos is a subtle art, but there was nothing subtle about how he became Gould’s tuner. The first time they encountered each other, he flatly refused to work on Gould’s … Chickering, an 1895 grand.… [When] larger pins were installed, just as Mr. Edquist had advised,” the piano worked well. “Gould later enlisted Mr. Edquist to be his private tuner and ready Gould’s preferred Steinway for recording sessions…. Charles Verne Edquist was born on Jan. 10, 1931, in Fairy Glen, Saskatchewan.” Edquist’s wife, Lillian, died on Sept. 20. He is survived three sons and a daughter.
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