Piano Guidance
Piano Guidance
Photo: cottonbro studio
Steinways More than 98 percent of concert pianists choose to perform on Steinways, according to figures collected by, not surprisingly, Steinway itself. In a field so reliant on nuance and subtlety as classical music, it's striking that a single manufacturer should hold such sway.
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Read More »A piano, it’s said, can emulate an entire orchestra: Its range extends from thunderous fortes to streams of liquid notes. Yet the majority of people who talk about piano sound today are talking about the sound of a single manufacturer: Steinway. For several generations of musicians and music lovers, Steinway has come to represent the acme of piano sound. Like Kleenex or Xerox, the name stands for a whole class of object. More than 98 percent of concert pianists choose to perform on Steinways, according to figures collected by, not surprisingly, Steinway itself. In a field so reliant on nuance and subtlety as classical music, it’s striking that a single manufacturer should hold such sway. Especially since the brand may not actually be better than its competitors. “The problem is that each Steinway is so different,” says Joey Calderazzo, an acclaimed jazz pianist who recently became a Blüthner artist. “I have no idea what I’m getting.” He adds, “If you find a Steinway that’s a good one, it’s as good as any other piano out there. [But] one in 30 Steinways are good. And you have other piano brands that are actually kind of changing the game.”
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Read More »The classical music field, with its devotion to maintaining traditions, has been fertile ground for the development of what Ohlsson has referred to as Steinway’s “monoculture.” Like most of the instruments of the modern orchestra, the piano hasn’t fundamentally changed since the late 19th century. Steinway’s ascendancy dates from the same period, and every time the company changes hands — most recently in 2013, when it was purchased by the hedge fund Paulson & Co. for $512 million — there are ripples of anxiety in the classical music world. Yet historically, Western piano technology has thrived on competition and innovation — witness the Classical period, when Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven and their contemporaries were constantly trying out different instruments, and manufacturers were constantly adapting them. There were distinct schools of sound, the Viennese more subtle, the English more focused on power and force. Steinway, despite its German origins, represents the dominance of the English school: louder, more strings, a massive iron frame, hammers mounted not on the keys but on the body of the piano. England won: In the 20th century even the quintessentially Viennese Bösendorfer switched to the English action. At the highest end of the piano spectrum, the differences between instruments are subtle: a $100,000 piano tends to make a pretty great sound, regardless of who built it. Indeed, connoisseurs may overstate the differences: A recent set of studies demonstrated that even soloists couldn’t always distinguish between a Stradivarius and a new violin. “Some people might argue that there are categories of tone that are particular to brands,” says FSU’s Garee, “but it’s been my experience that the stereotypical sounds have not always been there. I’ve played Yamahas that sounded like Schimmels, Schimmels that sounded like Hamburg Steinways; I’ve heard so many that defy the rules. Unless you’re playing dozens and dozens of pianos, most of us don’t have the perspective” to identify which manufacturer is “best.” And few pianists actually test out a wide range of concert-quality instruments. Soheil Nasseri, a 37-year-old concert pianist originally from Rockville, Md., who had to contend with a terrible Yamaha at a recent recital at Strathmore’s new hall, AMP, is deeply committed to Steinways. “Generally speaking,” he says “the Steinway is the only piano that has the kind of color possibilities, consistently, that allow an artist to make music on the very highest level.” But, “Having just said that,” he adds, “I have to say I played on a Bösendorfer in Germany that was as good as the best Steinways I’ve ever played on.” He admits he hasn’t tried out many other brands. Whatever the brand, selling pianos hasn’t gotten any easier. The recession in 2008 sparked a downturn in piano sales, and thus in production in Steinway’s U.S. factory, and the company left its historic flagship building in Manhattan at the end of last year and moved to new headquarters. Yet it has prevailed: Its New York branch is the only major American piano manufacturer left. But other high-end manufacturers are working to make themselves more appealing. Several leading brands have top-of-the-line instruments that represent decades of work at developing prototypes, whether animating an existing line, such as the Yamaha CFX or the Shigeru Kawai, or creating a new one, such as Fazioli. There have certainly been a number of innovations in recent years. Some Faziolis have four pedals rather than the usual three; the Australian firm Stuart & Sons makes instruments with up to 102 keys, 14 more than the 88-key norm. Some Steinway artists have been trying to push the envelope, under Steinway’s aegis: the pianist Pierre-Laurent Aimard helped spark the development of a louvered, transparent lid, known as “Sound Mirrors,” while earlier this year Daniel Barenboim unveiled a new piano, designed with the builder Chris Maene, which is supposed to meld the power of a modern concert grand with some of the sound qualities of a fortepiano, largely thanks to the arrangement the strings in parallel rather than in diagonal criss-cross. Also this year, the Hungarian pianist Gergely Boganyi unveiled a futuristic-looking instrument made partly of carbon fiber.
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Read More »The real game-changers in the piano market, though, are innovations in electronic and digital sound — and here Steinway has been playing catch-up. Yamaha’s Disklavier is a concert instrument that doubles as a contemporary player piano, able to reproduce a live performance without an actual player touching the keys. The same manufacturer’s Clavinova is a high-end electronic upright with concert-piano action and sampled sound that seamlessly blends with acoustic instruments — but can be set to be heard over headphones. “Steinway no longer has technical innovations; it has no patents,” says Dan Shykind, the admittedly biased co-owner of a Yamaha dealership, Downtown Piano Works in Frederick, Md., which regularly presents world-class artists in its tiny concert hall. “Yamaha has the market cornered on technology.”
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