Laurel Kenner on The
Piano Business
In Steinway Hall in Manhattan, a
cross between an old-fashioned bank vault and a
Renaissance church, painting on
the tall domed ceiling: I announce myself to the
receptionist. "Interested in an upright." Invited to sit
down, I do so at the
7-foot grand in the center of the
showroom under the dome and begin to play
Chopin's F major ballade. A
salesman materializes. Mr. Peretti has a rap down;
he bought one for his 4-year-old
granddaughter to start her off right. Old
journalist's trick: put the kids,
the dogs, the pretty women in the lede. I
agree heartily: "That's so
important. People buy poor instruments for their
kids, but how are the kids
supposed to be able to learn to produce a beautiful
tone?" "I have to go
without lunches," replies the cadaverous salesman, "but
it's worth it."
I am in luck; Steinway has eight
of the full-size "K model" uprights in. I play
them all, testing them with
passages from the four Ballades...pianissimo,
fortissimo, with fire. I try to
make them sing. I put down refundable deposits
on two in the basement to hold
them for 10 days so I can hear them upstairs when
I have a fresh ear again. I try out Japanese and Korean pianos
designed by
Steinway as well -- they are made
by robots, as opposed to machine-wielding
humans. The Korean one, the
lowest-end, sounds best.
"Welcome to the
family," says Mr. Peretti, as I leave.
Next stop: piano row on 58th
Street, one block up from Steinway. I stop in
Klavierhaus, which specializes in
rebuilding fine old pianos and also sells the
new Italian piano Fazioli,
created 30 years ago by a pianist-engineer. The
proprietor has an explanation for
the slumping popularity of piano playing: the
new pianos are awful, mechanical,
soulless. "People aren't stupid," he said.
"The magic is gone."
Fazioli decided he wanted to
build a better piano. I play the Fazioli. It's like
driving a Rolls. Liquid, clear.
Because I dropped out of the serious piano world 30
years ago, just as these new
instruments were coming on line, I had never heard of them.
Mr. Fazioli is a member of an
extremely wealthy furniture company in Northern Italy, where
the manufacture of shoes,
clothing and violins is legendary. He produces his pianos without
regard to expense. Nevertheless,
they are cheaper than Steinways.
Sajurti, the proprietor of,
Klavierhaus, explains that
Steinway signs artists to a devil's pact: Steinway will provide pianos for
their
concerts anywhere in the world, but
the agreement specifies that the artists can ONLY play Steinways.
This edge has given Steinway a
pretty good monopoly.
Plenty of people don't like what
Steinway done with that advantage. Among them Is
Steinway's former director of
manufacturing, Mr. Pramberger, who returned from
vacation one year to find himself
locked out of his office. Young Chang, the Korean
piano maker, let him set up shop
in its factory, and Mr. Pramberger is free to make
pianos to his own specifications.
The Pramberger grand I play is close to having the
magical tone I dream of in a
piano; the upright, unfortunately, is flat.
And where did I get the idea of a
magical piano tone? Well, there is a piano made
by a company called Grotrian
(formerly Grotrian Steinveg). This is a German firm
founded by a Steinway – a Steinveg
-- who stayed home while the rest of the family came to America.
Mr. Steinveg joined an engineer,
Mr. Grotrian, in building pianos, and Grotrian Steinveg
has been making pianos ever
since. Mr. Steinveg eventually joined his family in America,
and the Steinveg was eventually
dropped from the German company’s name after a dispute
with Steinway.
When I played a Grotrian in the
'70s it was one of the few occasions in my life when I truly believed
that my playing sounded like
music. It was a 7-foot grand at the hillside home of one of my teacher's
students,
the wife of the last surviving
five-star general, Omar Bradley. All the students played. The harmonics
shimmered in the air; the piano
sang. I am told that my playing was so beautiful that my teacher
stopped talking in the next room
and asked who was playing, I who was the least of all his students.
All the students who could afford
the 10 grand bought Grotrians. My Dad had lost everything in the
depression of 73-74, and I was
not among those happy buyers. But ever since, I have dreamed of
Grotrian. I have read of others having the same reaction
to these pianos.
A few years ago, when I knew I
had to start playing piano again, I looked for Grotrians and could
not find them. Apparently the
U.S. marketing had been bungled, and they were simply not to be found.
I ended up buying a Petrov, made
by a newly entrepreneurial Czech supplier of practice pianos to
the former Soviet Union.
What a miracle, then, when I
walked into Beethoven Piano, my last stop today and learned within
one minute flat that the store
had just signed a deal with Grotrian to be their New York outlet
and distributor, and at that very
moment 19 Grotrian uprights were being taken out of packing cases
at the warehouse. I felt like a
surfer who caught the perfect wave, or a trader who has caught the
bottom and the top, or a
ballerina who has executed a perfect move.
The proprietor assured me
that these Grotrians are as good
as the 1970s models, and that the uprights are as good as the
grands. Best of all, they are
about 40%-70% cheaper than the Steinways. Beethoven Piano is anxious
to put Steinway to some
competition.
Learning the piano is no longer
de rigueur, alas, for young people. Nowadays, "keyboards"
are the rule, with programmed
percussion tracks as mechanical as the factory processes
by which they are made. I am
merely a practitioner of a dying art, but I have no axes to
grind, and I think the decline of
piano playing is sad. I have many reasons, too many to go
into here. As a free market person,
I do not blame the market for the decline; in fact, it
will be buyers like me, who
remember the old sounds, who will revive the market for Grotrians
and their ilk, and who buy the
new pianos from Fazioli and Pramberger.
10/30/03