In August, I travelled to New York City with our CEO and Artistic Administrator on an especially exciting mission: we were headed to the Steinway factory to choose a new concert grand piano for Jacoby Symphony Hall. While good pianos in our homes can last for generations, the sheer volume of use on concert instruments means they usually need to be replaced every twenty years, and our existing piano was at the end of its distinguished career. With a season full of Mozart piano concertos on the horizon, we needed to get something new quickly.
Founded in 1853, Steinway & Sons has two factories, one in Hamburg in Germany, and another in Queens, New York. Their pianos are among the finest in the world; their nine-foot model D is the industry standard in classical music, powerful enough to soar above an orchestra without any amplification. Model Ds can be found in over 90% of concert halls worldwide. Meticulously built by hand, each piano has a unique voice, and finding one that complements a particular hall can be tricky.
At the turn of the last century, piano building was booming. In the age before the gramophone, many more households had pianos than today. Demand for Steinways was so great that the company built streets of rowhouses around its factory to house their large number of skilled workers. In fact, the area of Astoria around the showroom is still named Steinway.
We arrived early in the morning for a tour of the factory. This was my first visit and I found the whole experience absolutely fascinating. We saw the rack that bends multiple layers of wood into the U shape of the piano’s body, drying out for months in a heated room that reeked of formaldehyde. We saw the incredible precision with which the soundboard is chiseled out from a single piece of Alaskan spruce. The cast iron frames that hold the enormous tension of all the strings are manufactured in a foundry in Ohio owned by Steinway, before being shipped to New York and Hamburg to be fitted into each piano’s wooden casing. Technicians “voice” the completed piano by either softening or hardening the felt hammers that hit the strings with a variety of implements including pins and lacquer. The sheer skill of the workmanship was breathtaking, every tiny improvement over the decades individually patented.
After the tour of the factory we were shown into a gleaming showroom with five Ds lined up beside each other. It’s customary to have a concert pianist join you at this point to help choose. We were lucky enough to have Natasha Paremski, a wonderful Russian-American whom some of you may remember from Brahms Second Concerto a couple of seasons ago. Natasha said she already had a favorite, but played each of the pianos for us, commenting on what was good and bad in each. One piano had a spectacularly powerful bass, but the higher strings didn’t seem to sustain enough. Another had a wonderfully warm tone, but we worried it wouldn’t carry across the orchestra in Jacoby Hall. Another was incredibly bright and powerful, but lacked subtly and character. We quite quickly had consensus that one piano was special. In the relatively small showroom we could feel its resonant bass notes through our feet, its treble notes seemed to sing forever, and the middle range was powerful but also beautiful with a special personality that intrigued us. It turned out this was the piano Natasha had chosen from the very start. Natasha played us snippets of Rachmaninoff and Prokofiev, I played a little Chopin and Schubert, and after much discussion and debate we were all in agreement that this was the right instrument for Jacksonville.
The piano arrived a couple of weeks later. When I was a little boy, the most exciting Christmases were those that included a new bicycle. For the first time in decades I felt that same excitement as a group of staff and I watched an enormous box be wheeled off a truck and enter backstage before being unwrapped onstage. All this took place with the instrument on its side. Eventually the legs were attached, and there was a terrifying moment as the piano was flipped over to rest on its legs. There was a collective sigh of relief once everything was in the right place, and I stepped over the play the model D’s first notes in its new home.
Florida isn’t kind to pianos. The humidity affects the density of the wood in the soundboard and the felt in the hammers. This means it takes time for a piano to get used to the environment. Our new D has been sitting on stage for several weeks now, and as we approach our first concerts, a technician from New York will fly down to “voice” the piano to the concert hall. He’ll listen to rehearsals with piano and orchestra before making thousands of adjustments to the hammers and action. Different registers will carry differently in the hall, and it takes enormous skill to get the match just right. I can’t wait to hear how the sound of the piano changes over its first few months in Jacksonville as it makes itself at home in Jacoby Hall.
You can hear this wonderful new instrument five times this season featuring a world-class roster of soloists. We are indebted to Ann Hicks for her generosity in funding the purchase of our new Steinway and sponsoring the David M. Hicks Mozart Piano Concerto Series. I know I speak for all the musicians and staff when I say we can’t wait to see you soon in Jacoby Symphony Hall!
Originally published in The Florida Times-Union on September 24, 2021: