Unlike some European makers, it’s hard to miss Steingraeber, being just off Steingraeber Passage.

Let’s see, isn’t there a piano company around here someplace?

My street cred must be higher, and my timing was right because this time Udo Steingraeber took me around. You cannot imagine a more involved, knowledgable, enthusiastic proponent for the world of high end pianos and his in particular.

The Steingraeber factory also exudes history, being in continuous use for, well I forget the exact number, but a number of years.

Steingraeber places GREAT emphasis on the perfect mating between inner and outer rim. They go so far as to create the outer rim, using the exact inner rim that will be on the same piano, as a mold. Here 2 inner and outer rims are being created at the same time, numbered and matched forever.

There is a vast array of construction and design details that go into a Steingraeber and many of them have been adapted, modified, or dropped in recent history. This is an active, living breathing maker, not content to build historical artifacts. Here I must add that I found this trait in all the makers I visited, but Steingraeber is particularly active offering carbon fiber soundboards and the new phoenix bridge.

This piano has both

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 items in a bewildering array.

However the revelation to me was the variety of food “stations” (for lack of a better word) where one could grab a quick bite. These ranged from a variety of wine and champagne bars, to a number of small individual cooking stations, some with tables and some with only counters, where one could eat whatever was the specialty of that station. I chose fish and had them take a beautiful hunk of salmon from the display and plop it directly on the grill.

Other stations included shell fish (oysters, clams etc), sushi, steaks and chops, wurst and sausages (including some, the ingredients of which I chose not to consider)  and just about everything in between.

While I was having my dinner, a group of casual (youngish) business people sat down and ordered 10 Lobster tails and had a huge plate of oysters sent over from the shell fish station nearby. Clearly the business climate is improving somewhere.

My salmon, salad and rice enjoyed, I moseyed over to a small hidden bar serving genuine  Budwiser beer from the Czech Republic.This is a wonderful true European Pils with no connection to the yellow water called Budwiser in this country.

The real treat was the bartender who looked like he came out of a George Groz cartoon.  Pouring a beer took almost 5 minutes, with a glass rinse, an initial pour then a pause while the head settled. Another pour followed by another head settle, followed yet again. The result was a perfect foam head that clearly was an important part of the beer experience that he served up.

There is craftsmanship everywhere, you just have to look for it.

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?

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 the olympics is not bad, but nobody will say it’s as good as gold. Sports of course have their merits, but essentially looking at life through the lens of a sports background removes much of the subtlety.

Of course I’m prejudiced. The arts make different demands; exploring ones own ability to understand and express emotions, the exploration of some of the greatest minds of civilization, the opening of the soul to worlds beyond words, time clocks and scoreboards.  But the world has a hard time with this lack of objectivity. Just look at the proliferation of piano competitions. People want somebody to tell them who is best and since a panel of judges works for the olympics, why can’t it work in music?

The purpose of this post is not to dissect the problems with piano competitions. There is another point I want to make.

Recently a prominent dealer sent a piano in to a venue for a performance of a prominent pianist, one known to have enthusiasm for the particular make of piano being sent in. But, after trying both instruments,  the pianist chose another “house” piano. There was no problem with the piano sent in, it is just that the other one fit the artistic requirements a little better. It was an artistic choice, not a political one ( I know because I am very good friends with the pianist involved and am very aware of his view of such things).

However, the dealer was shocked, dismayed and deeply disappointed. He felt he had “lost” and the other company, who actually did nothing since the other piano just happened to be  a particularly nice, particularly well maintained house piano, “won”. This reaction not only ruined his night and weekend and raised his blood pressure, it clouded his ability to understand the situation and therefore be more effective in the future.

Building a concert stage presence when one is not the industry monopolist is much more like building the pyramids than running a race.  Building a pyramid is a very long, slow and difficult process that more than anything rewards perseverance.  Sure, a huge block is going to fall off the ramp occasionally, possibly killing a number of the slaves working to get it up there. But the loss of one block needs to be taken in context of the complete construction. The loss of one block did not suddenly mean that all the other blocks in place were lost or had no value. No, it means “damn, now we’ve got to get another block up there”.

Looking at the world through the eyes of a sports “winner and looser” clouds the vision. It’s easy, sure, but nothing in the arts world is about easy. Its about something much deeper and more human that “easy”.

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 professional musicians of all caliber visiting, including an annual visit by Stevie Wonder. Fans line up for autographs by people I don’t recognize and the hallways are decorated with colored mohawks, chains and fishnet, as well as business suits. Guess which group I’m in?

It’s a busy week, usually arriving on Monday and spending Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday setting up the display and getting ready. Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday are show days with Sunday usually when we get a chance to visit the other booths and catch up with friends, enemies and competitors.

The big news for Bosendorfer is that our integration into the Yamaha sales and marketing organization was made public and obvious. In the past, including the last 2 years since our acquisition by Yamaha, we displayed as an independent company. Our place was usually in a separate room on the 2nd floor of the main show building. The 2nd floor has individual rooms used by us, Schimmel, Mason & Hamlin, Kawai, Samick, Bechstein and others.  While most makers just set up with few decorations, we had created a scene reminiscent of a Viennese coffeehouse, with indirect lighting, marble top coffee tables and chairs, champagne served in glasses, and espresso and cappuccino made in a $2000 machine using beans from Vienna. It was very elegant, different and effective. It was also a lot of work to set up, take down and maintain (think about washing the glasses and cups – no, we did not hire somebody to do that).

NAMM is a bit of a problem for piano makers. It is very expensive, our products don’t change much and time spent with dealers is always interrupted by people who feel they just HAVE to come in and bang out some Billy Joel tune over and over. So last year we tried something completely different, by installing ourselves at the wonderful Le Merigot hotel on the beach in Santa Monica and having our dealers stay and visit with us there. It was wonderful and effective. Meetings with dealers that usually last 30 noisy minutes at the NAMM show stretched into 2 and 3 hours giving us a chance to really connect with our dealers in a meaningful way. Getting back and forth to Anaheim was a nightmare in LA traffic but the beach made up for it. This year was different in that we made our relationship with Yamaha more public by having a separate room across from the main Yamaha display in the Marriott.

An interesting twist this year is that Yamaha just happened to be introducing a new series of handcrafted concert pianos, the CFX concert grand and the CF4 and CF6. I have a long history with Yamaha (12 years, including 10 as Director of Yamaha Artist Services) and have a huge amount of respect for the seriousness and dedication with which Yamaha approaches concert piano building. Heck, I own one of their concert grands (CFIIIS 51GX). So announcing a significant redesign of their concert grand was a big deal to me and is a very clear message that these 2 companies (Yamaha and Bosendorfer) were not as far apart as some people might think.

NAMM was diminished this year due to the lack of presence of some piano makers, including Bluthner, Steingraeber, Forster, Sauter and Bechstein; all familiar faces in years past. Schimmel, Estonia and Fazioli were all present and a couple examples of Seiler were in the Samick booth. That being said, my take is that the vibe was more positive than in the last couple of years. Our sales were up (not that I’d tell you if they weren’t), dealers seemed more confident than before, the main show floor seemed crowded and there were more “freaks” (pink mohawks etc) than in the past 2 years…all good signs.

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 and reverberation to some degree. However as the show went on, we grew to really like the change. The extreme lack of reverb focused ones attention on the clarity of the sound and the typical Bosendorfer sustain. People coming in played completely differently and the “bangers” were very intimidated and didn’t stay very long. However, because everything was so close, it did make having a conversation a little challenging when someone was playing over mezzo piano. The reality is that you can really hear and understand the differences in piano brands in this kind of very dry, small environment. Everything, including the pianist, sounds bigger in a big, acoustically wet room. But that does not mean it is good.

Bosendorfer expanded and upgraded the CS line last year, but Lufthansa destroyed the one example we had brought to show dealers at Le Merigot. That combined with business conditions made the CS introduction last year  a bit of a non event so we treated this year as a new introduction. The line expanded to include (re-include) the models 170 and 180. The upgrade means that the ONLY difference between the CS and the standard line was the finish and some case details. Everything technical, including stringing, is exactly the same. This actually makes manufacturing easier, since we don’t need to decide if a particular instrument is CS or standard line until the very end of production when the finish is applied. The downside of the out-of-the-gun matte finish on the CS is that it is impossible to get a perfect repair. This is fine for schools and institutions, the primary target market of the line, where pianos get the tar beat out of them anyway. But it can be an issue in homes. Forewarned is forearmed.

There is more than just the room change that makes this year different.  There was a major reorganization announced in Vienna in late November. Basically the decision was made that Bosendorfer was too small to be able to afford its own worldwide sales and marketing team. So Bosendorfer will now concentrate on being a manufacturer and sales and marketing activities will be passed on to the representative Yamaha companies around the world. Here that means Yamaha Corporation of America (YCA) for the 50 states and Yamaha Canada for, well, Canada.

I don’t necessarily disagree with this decision. Business has been down and something in our overall structure had to change. Yamaha has stated over and over that they plan no changes in the way we make pianos or where we make them, so stepping into the distribution scene makes sense. The challenge is that Bosendorfer is a very different product from the standard Yamaha piano, sold by completely different dealers (with some exceptions) and by very different sales reps. Pianos are not just pianos at this level and credibility is a very important brand attribute. There  is a lot of work to do and the first step was to bring the public image of the 2 companies slightly closer together which meant a room next to Yamaha at the Marriott.

Another interesting twist is that technically my job with Bosendorfer ends on March 31 of this year. Bosendorfer, if you remember, will no longer have its own sales and marketing team, of which myself, Ray Chandler and Susan Muhler are all part. There have been some good discussions about Ray and myself continuing with Yamaha in some capacity but the clear casualty is my friend and colleague, Susan. Maybe more on that later, but her impact on Bosendorfer will be missed. I’m not crying too much for her, though. More people visited the booth to see her than to see the pianos and I’m fairly sure she will land on her feet.

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 Friday.

NAMM, oddly enough, is not the place to evaluate pianos and the huge, diverse Yamaha display makes it essentially impossible. Besides, talking about piano sound is a sure fire way to drive pretty girls from the room and make enemies. That being said, I will make a couple of observations.

Yamaha makes a really really good concert piano. They are very serious builders and use some hand techniques that they don’t even use at Bosendorfer (hand chiseling the rib tails).  They are looking for what I call a “high rim tension” sound, with power and overtones. But they also look for a lyrical sweetness and sustain and are very comfortable trading some raw power and noise for these characteristics. This combination makes the end result very pleasing and flexible as long as your standard of comparison is not the typical rip-your-face-off, noise-is-good standard that many competition participants seem to prefer these days.

Knowing that NAMM was not the place to evaluate pianos,  I was, as expected,  unimpressed with the sound at the press conference. It was  very nice but no special characteristics could be heard in that environment. The next day the piano was moved to a different room and set on a 4 foot high stage for the Dealers Breakfast. Frederic played the same repertoire (Chopin and his own Prokofiev transcription) but the effect, at least on me, was quite different. I was also sitting in the first row which helped. Here the characteristics and color really came out more and I was very impressed. This is not some Steinway wanna-be, thank god. This is a concert piano with a real personality and range of colors.

The smaller sizes seem to share the tonal characteristics. One interesting construction feature is that the 2 smaller pianos have “open window” pinblocks where the top surface of the pinblock is exposed, rather than hidden below the plate. The concert grand does not have this feature. The concert grand on the other hand exhibits holes drilled in the bass bridge which is a characteristic of high end european concert pianos but has not, at least in my memory, appeared on Yamaha pianos before.

No single detail makes a piano but there is really something important here. How it is accepted remains to be seen but I take my hat off to Yamaha for pursuing an alternative concert piano with such determination.

Yamaha has offered 2 smaller sizes of crafted pianos, called the S4 and S6 (6′3″ and 6′11″ respectively). One of the complaints about the marketing of these pianos is that they look exactly like the regular line Yamaha pianos. It is thought that potential customers were turned off on spending $20,000 to $30,000 more on a piano that looks exactly like a neighbors much cheaper instrument. Kawai addressed this by giving their upper end a different name, a sort of Toyota/Lexus approach. Yamaha addressed these issues with some very interesting case details, including a unique pointed arm and unusual pedal lyre.

Click on any of these photos to see it larger.

The other interesting fact is that one would logically assume that the CF4 and CF6 would replace the S4 and S6  but no, Yamaha Japan feels compelled to offer all 4 models. Yamaha Corporation of America has elected to import only the 2 new CF models leaving the S series to the rest of the world. Good decision, I think. The S series are very nice but having 2 separate lines is much too confusing to the market.

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, at least intellectually, the culture of Bosendorfer distribution. There currently is clear and easy, usually 1 person, communication between the dealer and Bosendorfer for all issues, including inventory, service, credit and marketing. In addition, the brand attributes of Bosendorfer are subtle and complex and take a great deal of credibility to convey with any effectiveness. This credibility does not come from simply reading a sales guide, but from background, experience and dedication.  Yamaha knows that this culture is not something to be taken lightly or duplicated easily and has gone out of their way to ensure that as much of this culture as possible is maintained. They have stated clearly that being a Yamaha dealer has no bearing on whether or not one becomes a Bosendorfer dealer and the reverse applies as well.  This has calmed most of the Bosendorfer dealer network and helped them adapt a cautiously positive attitude.

2. The Yamaha sound and the Bosendorfer sound are very different

Yamaha is taking the “high rim tension” approach which results in a very different sound than the Bosendorfer low rim tension ideal. This means that these two concert pianos sounds do not compete with one another but are actually quite complementary. Within one corporate presence, one has access to two different approaches to piano tone, both of which are carefully considered, developed and supported.

3. The world is changing

Presence in concert halls with classical music performers means less and less each year. The  marketing of the dominant company in the concert world  is increasingly falling on ears that have either heard it all before or don’t care. Building fine pianos is one thing, having brilliant marketing is another and in this industry, the 2 do not combine in one company. The challenge will be to grow the market, or take market share, in new creative ways and there is are clear opportunities for this.

4. There are culture issues, both national and corporate

Bosendorfer is a small shop and Yamaha is a huge corporation. Bosendorfer dealers and customers are used to being part of a small family and Yamaha dealers are not. There is no way around this conflict as Yamaha integrates Bosendorfer into its logistic and administrative framework. The small shop feeling that Bosendorfer dealers currently enjoy does not have to disappear completely, but there is no question that some of it will. That may not be all bad, but it won’t all be good.

Yamaha is used to large numbers, corporate style reporting and a well proven formula for selling and distributing its many products. There is a part of Bosendorfer, for better or worse, that is still stuck in the 1800’s. This results in a feeling of inbred superiority that prevents the company from seeing a clear reflection in the mirror and from accepting that what worked for Ludwig Bosendorfer may not all apply in the 21st century.  Some of this age old culture must of course stay and the continuing high quality of the pianos reflects this perseverance.  But there is a disturbing calmness with which Bosendorfer accepts some suboptimal customer focused behavior that sometimes takes the form of “well, yes, maybe we don’t do a good job with parts and supplies, but after all, nothing sounds like a Bosendorfer!”.

5. Bosendorfer has been here before.

Bosendorfer was a subsidiary of Kimball International for 30 years. Kimball was a much less logical fit than Yamaha and yet Bosendorfer prospered during those years. In fact I firmly believe that a great part of Bosendorfers strong brand recognition in North America today is a direct result of the marketing money Kimball spent 20 years ago! Kimball was a much better steward of the Bosendorfer brand than they were of their own Kimball piano brand, since that brand has disappeared. Bosendorfer survived and actually thrived during this period. The company has been through changes of ownership before and the culture and quality has been maintained.

6. Yamaha needs what Bosendorfer offers and vice versa.

Bosendorfer knows the true high end piano world and is in a very good place to help Yamaha expand the market for Yamaha’s craft built CF series. It will require some careful listening and thought, but the knowledge is there. Yamaha can bring a worldwide discipline to Bosendorfer, hopefully without crushing the small shop feeling that seems to include thinking that  Ludwig Bosendorfer is just out to a long lunch.

Yamaha does not need Bosendorfer to teach them anything about piano building and Bosendorfer does not need Yamaha to introduce efficiencies into its manufacturing. These are knee jerk reactions from people who really don’t understand either company. The potential is more subtle and more powerful than that.

Oh, and one more thing. Everything in these posts is my personal opinion, not a statement of any kind by either company.

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.

However with the end of WWI, Julius’ family moved to the West and started making the Feurich piano again from scratch. Recent history includes a short lived acquisition by Bechstein (described by some as a “hostile takeover”)and a subsequent return to family ownership and management. More recently there was a joint project with a Chinese manufacturer for pianos for Asia. The recent ending of that agreement leaves the Asian built Julius Feurich line, made by others, available only in Asia. This chain of events has led to some speculation as to how many Feurich pianos are really produced in Germany.

I can confirm that I saw both grand and upright production in Gunzenhausen with typical German attention to detail and absolutely no indication that there was any “finishing off ” of Asian product going on, as some have speculated.

It is quite interesting to think about the Feurich production facilities now in comparison to the stature the company had in it’s earlier years in Leipzig. While all these makers are dedicated to a particular sound and the construction techniques that achieve that sound, and all have strong family connections, I get the impression that Julius is maintaining his legacy with a real dogged determination. I mean, come on, there are easier ways of making a living! And yet, here he is, making 20 grands this year, hopefully more the next. My assumption is that he is driven by the belief that the Feurich sound has a place in this world. I agree with him.