STEINWAY AND SONS
- PIANOS -
G'day folks,
Ever wondered who made the famous Steinway pianos? Read on ...
If you
were to guess what the most intricate thing being made in America today is,
chances are you wouldn’t imagine that it’s a piano. Almost entirely still hand
made and assembled in Queens, New York after 160 years, Steinway pianos are
known the world over. Lesser known, is the fact that Steinway & Sons shaped
the history of Queens when they created an entire utopian village out of the
marshlands we now call Astoria. At the Steinway factory, where a combination
of decades old machines, and new, cutting-edge ones are still producing a 1000
instruments a year, discover the remarkable history of the family
that made so much more than just pianos.
Walking
into the elegant Steinway factory in Astoria, one of the first things you
notice is what is missing– the sound of a piano. What does hit you however is
the smell of sawdust, and the distant sounds of sanding, delicate hammering and
wood being sawn. It’s more like walking into a master craftsman carpenter’s
guild in old Europe rather than a modern factory in Queens.
It
takes half a dozen careful hands to gently coerce the wood into the shape of a
grand piano, using presses invented by Steinway & Sons themselves. The
making of the rim is just the beginning of a journey from the lumberyard, to
trimming the wood, making the bridge, notching, stringing, key weighing,
regulating the action before being sent to the pounding room, where the piano
is first played and endlessly tweaked to ensure perfection, before the case is
finished. The entire process takes nearly a year.
Often,
the secret techniques used to make a Steinway are passed down in the age old
tradition from master craftsman to apprentice, generation after generation.
Each stage of making the piano has the creator’s name written on it. Story has
it that one old Steinway sent to Astoria for renovation was taken apart, only
for one of the craftsmen to see his grandfather’s name chalked on part of the
piano that been hidden from view since it was written there decades
before.
The
company had a remarkably humble beginning. An illiterate orphan from
Wolfshagen, Germany called Heinrich Engelhard Steinweg started as a carpenter
and cabinet maker. He began making his own instruments, particularly pianos,
before migrating with his family to New York in 1850. He changed his name to
Henry Steinway, creating Steinway & Sons the same year.From 1996 through
2013 the company traded on the stock exchange under the ticker symbol LVB,
which stood for Ludwig van Beethoven. In 2013, the company was acquired
and taken private by current owner Paulson & Company.
When
the younger Henry Steinway reported on his first day at work to his father, he
was told: “Henry, I am glad you are here. You are going to get a start where I
did.” Henry, initially ecstatic, was soon puzzled as his father led him to the
basement where he stopped by the maintenance foreman’s office, laconically
stating “he’s yours” and walked away.
It became New York’s principal
concert hall, home to the New York Philharmonic and was also used for public
events such as lectures by Charles Dickens when he first came to
America. Cleverly, concert goers had to walk through the showrooms en
route to their seats, passing by the range of Steinway pianos for sale. As
William Steinway remarked, “one concert on Saturday night sells pianos on
Monday morning.”
Clancy's comment: Amazing, eh? Where are the old crafts of yesteryear?
I'm ...
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