SPOILER Alert: There is nothing related to pianos in this post. I was back in Berlin recently. This being my 3rd trip, I’m beginning to feel like I know my way around a little. However this time it was freezing and dangerous since clearly nobody shovels snow in Berlin and every single walking surface was covered by an inch thick, uneven, rock hard layer of ice. The streets, however, were fine. Berlin has any number of places to recommend to visitors, but I’m recommending the Food floor  on the 6th level of the KaDeWe department store. The store is a huge upscale department store, similar to Bloomingdales in the US, and more upscale than Macys. However the 6th floor is a food lovers delight. Similar to Harrods in London, you can find any kind of food here, from raw meats and fish of any type, to canned, bottled and boxed

I recently purchased a CD of Horowitz playing Schumann Kinderszenen, the Op 17 Fantaisie and the Arabeske. His performance of the last movement of Kinderszenen, “Der Dichter spricht” is worth twice the price of the CD, just  beautiful. The problem I have is that this CD was obviously made from different takes, and on some of the takes there are unisons that are noticeably and distractingly (to me) out of tune.  This is Horowitz, for gods sake. You mean nobody noticed?! This confirms my experience that very few people, including concert pianists, truly know what a piano should sound like. I know that is heresy, but how can you otherwise explain how many out of tune pianos get recorded?

I’m not a sports person. Skinny and hollow chested, I was much more at home behind the music stand practicing horn in high school than doing anything athletic. Now that I’m older I appreciate not having the knee and hip problems that many of my more physically active peers have, but I regret having to get into an exercising habit at an older age for health reasons. I wish that I had developed more of a physically active habit earlier in life. That being said, the problem with sports is that they simplify life; there is a winner and a loser and that’s that. Ok, it’s a little more complicated than that, but not much. Teamwork, strategy, tactics blah blah, the end result is the same, you want to win by an objective standard (score, clock, set of judges) and if you don’t win, you loose. Yes, second place in

NAMM (National Association of Music Merchants) is the big musical instrument industry trade show. Technically it’s held twice a year, but the big show is every January in Anaheim, California. Anybody and everybody connected with the musical products industry shows and attends NAMM. This includes pianos of all price points, drums, brass and wind instruments, guitar picks, amps, guitars, disco fog machines, makers of fine hand crafted conducting batons and everything, I mean everything in between. It’s a huge show and the Anaheim Convention Center is one of the only convention centers in the country that can hold it. NAMM is not a consumer show.  Manufacturers display their products and sell them to retailers, who will later sell them to consumers. Therefore it is a wholesale show, not open to the public. Thank god, because it is busy and crazy enough as it is. That being said, there are always

Bosendorfer, in the past, has used NAMM to show some beautiful examples of our cabinet design skills and veneer work. However with business being slow and space smaller, it made more sense to show instruments that have more immediate sales potential. This year we displayed a model 290 Imperial with the CEUS reproducing system, a model 200 Johann Strauss, a model 214 in Jactoba (ya-TOE-ba) and a new example of the CS series. All these pianos, with the exception of the 290, were sold to dealers during the show. The 290 CEUS is going to North Carolina to (hopefully) be used in a recording project that will be discussed later. Our new display room in the Marriott was small, with thick carpet and pipe and drape on the walls, resulting in a very acoustically “dry” room. At first it seemed to be  negative, since good piano sound usually means echo

Yamaha has had a high end “craft built” line for a number of years and has been a very serious builder of concert pianos for decades. The concert grand, the CFIII (CF3) has undergone a number of iterations and experiments, resulting in the model CFIIIS that has been the flagship for the last 8 years or so. This year Yamaha is unveiling, both at NAMM and at the Frankfurt show,  the newest version called the CFX (X, not 10) and 2 smaller models with the same construction techniques, the CF4 and CF6. While there was a lot for Yamaha to talk about at NAMM this year, they did focus a lot of attention on these new pianos, hosting a press conference at which Mitsuru Umemura, the President of Yamaha Corporation global spoke and pianist Frederic Chiu performed. The performance (short but effective) was repeated at the Yamaha Dealers breakfast on

So now you have a major Japanese piano maker with a proven high end approach owning and taking marketing and sales responsibility for a 180 year old Austrian maker of what is generally referred to as one of the worlds finest craft built pianos; what happens next? My prediction is that good things will come out of this for both companies but the road will not be pot hole free. 1. Yamaha understands the high end piano world. Yamaha has beaten their collective heads against the entrenched  base, prejudices and the occasionally less than honorable marketing techniques of the current industry monopolist and they are deeply aware of the sensitivity that surrounds the Bosendorfer brand identity. They have repeatedly stated that they plan no changes in Bosendorfer manufacturing and but will have to take some steps to ensure the continued viability of Bosendorfer as a semi-independent entity. Yamaha also understands,

Feurich is located in the charming lake town of Gunzenhausen. We in the states think things are old if George Washington visited. However both Martin Luther and Goethe visited Gunzenhausen. In fact, my hotel (same name, same site, different building) was established in 1364!! The few Feurich pianos I have seen have always impressed me. They have a strikingly unique sound, but well within the norms of German makers. The recent history of Feurich has confused even some in the German piano industry, leading to me hearing all sorts of stories about their current production. However I was met by a very cordial Julius Feurich (IV, I think) and his son Julius (V, if I’m correct about the previous). Founded in Leipzig, the Feurich family included a number of piano builders, even competing among themselves for a while.

I never met the man, but I’d bet he would think this title is stupid. It may be, but he is not. If you want one great read, subscribe to his blog. Clear, short and always valuable. One post titled “Everyone is Clueless”   got me thinking about its relevance to high end piano dealers and the regular feeling that selling a high end piano is a “happy accident” and that they should take any profit margin they can get. WRONG. Making these pianos available is a partnership with makers, technicians, distributors, dealers and customers. Every member of this partnership must receive value, and this value does not necessarily mean low price. To support the purchasers of these pianos as well as the makers, profit is required. Selling these pianos should not be accidents and this requires effort and expenditures by everyone involved.

I know this is classical music nerdy, but here is a master class in the conductors craft. Grainy, dull, black and white, yet riveting. The late, great, Carlos Kleiber conducting at Bayreuth. The soprano is Catarina Ligendza. Thanks for the tip, Alex Ross