Originally Posted by
muscat
Why on earth do cellist and double bass players take instruments with them? Pianists seem to manage OK with whatever the concert hall provides them.

I guess you don’t play a musical instrument? While it is of course possible to pick up any old thing and get a tune out of it, as a musician you learn to deal with differences between instruments which are very obvious to the player, but it takes time, and gets in the way of concentrating on the music itself.
It’s not unlike getting used to a new car. While it gets you from A to B, finding the right settings for the windscreen wipers and headlights are not all the same, the clutch bite is different, the accelerator response isn’t the same, the brakes behave differently, etc. After a while you learn the subtleties and adapt, and it becomes second nature, but it takes time, and it’s not unusual to stall and judder while you do so.