Steinway: Piano of the Immortals

“Look, now you see an important, rare moment! Six men clamp a wooden rod about six meters long into a bending frame, a machine that looks like a lying bull. The men bend, press and bow. Seventeen rows of maps glued together provide protection before forcefully bending them into graceful curves. Here are the birth notes of the Steinway grand concert.

The creation of this noble instrument is loud, dirty and smelly. There is hammering, drilling, soldering, screwing and grinding. Chips fly, painting steam. Many workers wear hearing protection, masks, goggles and gloves – or at least one of each. Everyone has specialized in a certain process, usually for many years, sometimes even in the fourth generation. One of the younger workers was assigned to dust work: a robot polishes a black wooden surface behind a glass pane. But to this day, most of the work is done by hand – unless, as Vice President of Marketing Anthony Gilroy says, a machine can be a little more precise than a human .

The world’s finest concert grand piano has been made in New York for 171 years, and in this factory in Astoria, Queens since 1853. It used to be part of a whole town including schools, a church and a sports park – all for mostly German workers. A large number of migrants still work here, most of them from Eastern Europe and Latin America.

The founder of the company, Henry Steinway, was originally called Heinrich Engelhard Steinweg and he was a German from the Harz Mountains. At the beginning of the 19th century, he was the only and the youngest of twelve children who survived war, hunger and cold. At the age of fifteen, Heinrich Steinweg was a poor orphan. He supported himself by being a carpenter and later by building musical instruments. For his wedding, he gave his wife Juliane his first square piano. In 1836 he built his first grand piano in a laundry room – it is now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. The Steinwegs lived in Seesen and had ten children. He started his sons building pianofortes. When business failed in the middle of the century, the family emigrated to New York, where they founded their company in 1853 under the English name “Steinway & Sons” – the daughters were only allowed to be useful as piano teachers.

At that time there were already about 200 piano makers in New York. In those days before radio, cinemas or even cars, the piano was the most important source of entertainment. Anyone who could somehow afford it had one at home. Heinrich Steinway and his sons had the experience and ambition to participate in the competition. They won tournament after tournament. Queens and kings bought with them; Rubinstein, Liszt and Rachmaninoff gave concerts on their grand pianos. Steinway’s marketing slogan was: “The Instrument of the Immortals.” Today, according to Yahan Liu, 98 percent of concert pianists play on a Steinway. An almost terrifying autocracy.

Now she leads us upstairs to a tropical, hot and humid room. Here, the previously bent piano frame is stored directly for up to six months after 24 hours in the media, she explains. Dozens of other cases stand straight in a long line. Because of this long curing time, Steinway production takes about a year.

The grand pianos are available in six sizes, from S (small) to D – the largest concert pianos. The company also makes some durable pianos as well as two cheaper lines called Essex and Boston. The smallest handmade wings start at $90,000, the most expensive of the previous wings cost $2.8 million and are in the showroom in Manhattan, where Yahan Liu usually ‘ advise customers on their purchase.

Now it’s time to get to the inner workings; we enter the belly section. Photos are prohibited. It is easy to copy many of Steinway’s construction tricks, but the company has still kept a big secret: the construction of the soundboard. It is said that the soul of the grand piano is the most important part of the sound body. Steinway uses the wood from spruce trees that grow on the northern slope of an uninhabited island in Alaska, where even light irradiation leads to regular annual rings.

Everything is thought out down to the last detail. An instrument consists of more than 12,000 parts and is assembled in more than 100 work processes. Steinway owns around 150 of its patents, the bowing center being one of them. Nevertheless, the biggest changes took place in the first thirty years after the company was founded, explains Anthony Gilroy.

It’s hard to believe when a wing plays alone at the end of the lead. Like the ghost hands of Lang Lang, Goldberg or Hélène Grimaud: the Spirio model can imitate hundreds of Steinway artists because they have recorded these pieces themselves before. You can also use it to record your children playing and of course play yourself, explained Yahan. So really: a tool for immortality.