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
I learned a couple of interesting things about Forster pianos during my visit. Click on each thumbnail to enlarge.
They have this cool slot cut in the inner rim that allows it to resonate somewhat separately. I’ve seen a number of Forster pianos over the years but had never noticed it, not that it is easy to notice on the completed piano. You’d have to look carefully at the very bass end where the soundboard meets the inner rim and ask yourself why there appears to be a very precise gap there.
While August Förster pianos are not plentiful in the US, they have been sold here long enough to be known for their consistently high quality and dark, rich tone. This kind of consistent, identifiable tone does not come by chance, but rather from generations of consistent work and dedication.
I met up in Löbau Germany with Bert Neidhardt who has been the US distributor for August Förster for something like 40 years. Löbau is deep inside what had been the DDR, or East Germany and has not, at least to my eyes, thrived under the DDR or reunification. But I have always admired the Förster piano and was really looking forward to visiting. I was not disappointed.
To recap my philosophy, I do not see the worlds true high end makers as competitors. With the idea of “tonal diversity” firmly in mind, I think these makers support each other in trying to reach prospects who might otherwise have, from pure marketing exposure, a narrow idea of what represents true quality in the piano world.
These European makers have very specific, very individual tone that usually appeals in a very direct, individual way. If someone truly loves the sound of X, they probably won’t be interested in Z. And this is a good thing, since there are many music styles and many approaches to interpretation. There should be, logically, many tonal options available to support this wonderful world of individuality.
Therefore I find it personally and professionally rewarding to learn as much as I can about these makers and they have all, so far, universally accepted my visits and my intentions. A couple of years ago I toured Sauter but I wasn’t blogging then and my photos were not very good. Last year I toured Bluthner, Schimmel and Steingraeber. At that time only Bluthner allowed me to take photos.
I took another tour in early November visiting August Förster, Steingraeber (this time with photos) and Feurich. I posted a review of this trip on PianoWorld. I’m taking that post as the core here, with some expanding.
A high end piano, while weighing hundreds of pounds, is actually quite a delicate item. The 2 biggest dangers are swings in humidity and improper servicing.
Humidity:
While high humidity (greater than 70%) can cause inconveniences, such as sticking keys, it rarely causes true damange. Besides, in this day and age most homes that have high end pianos have central air conditioning that keeps the humidity in the summer months at a relatively constant level.
Low humidity (less than 40%) can truly damage your piano. This damage can include soundboard cracks, loose tuning pins, action problems and more.
While maintaining a constant humidity level, say 45%, is desirable, it is difficult to achieve. The most critical step is to put an absolute limit to how low the humidity in the room can go. This usually means carefully tracking humidity with a simple hygrometer, available at most hardware stores, and adding humidity by using a humidifier.
It is best to add moisture to a room, using humidifiers that have a large reservoir to reduce the need to refill and to reduce the chances of going dry for too long. Electrostatic humidifiers, while quiet, have a disadvantage of leaving a white dust. Drum or wick humidifiers need a fan that contributes to noise, but are most effective overall. Piano Care continued
I travel a lot, so I should be a prime customer for a number of travel related companies. If I had a bigger travel budget things might be different, especially when it comes to hotels and maybe air lines. However in this business one has to keep travel costs down. For that reason I am rather brand ambivalent except for a couple of cases.
Hertz
I really won’t price shop for a car rental because Hertz is so very good at getting me into the car and out of the lot. Hertz is usually more expensive but the discount I get from my status at one particular airline helps mitigate the difference. I’m also a Gold member which gives me no price advantage but is the secret to the easy in, easy out benefit. I go right to be bus, get dropped right at the screen which tells me where my car is. Show my license on the way out and I’m gone. I have a membership at another leading car rental company but even then I have to wait while the type endlessly on the computer…what are they typing anyway, they already have my info.
Hertz trains their people well. They aren’t warm and fuzzy in a fake way, just crisply efficient and cordial. I’ve had a couple of hiccups here and there. Their staff at DCA really have not gotten the memo on how to treat customers. Going to the Gold desk in that airport garage means getting the impression that you are really bothering them and taking them away from whatever they are doing at the computer terminal. Once is a fluke, twice is a pattern.
All rental cars are older and crummier now but they spiff me once in a while with something nice. I’ve got an Impala with a sun roof for this week of distance driving, but the AUX input jack doesn’t work. Oh well.
Hotwire
Ok, this is not the brand loyalty the hotels want me to have, but I book all hotels through Hotwire. Once you figure out the ratings (never ever go with 2 stars) you can get from adequate to really nice hotel rooms for real bargains. Not always the same bargain each time but I can really count on them to set me up right. I wish they did international hotel bookings. Continue with brand loyalty
More traveling, this time to the midwest, and more driving. First a visit to a new customer in St. Louis, then a long drive to Elizabethtown KY to visit the warehouse at Keyboard Carriage. This is about a 5 hour drive but it is through some very beautiful scenery. You have to love the look of the midwest, and being a Midwesterner, I do.
The next day, I not only drove back to St. Louis, but 2 hours further to Columbia. While on my way I decided to take a detour and drop in on one of my old homes, Jasper Indiana. You may remember that I worked for Kimball during the time Kimball owned Bösendorfer. Kimball has its headquarters in Jasper and the piano factory (Kimball, not Bösendorfer) was about another 30 minutes up the road in French Lick.
Jasper is characteristic of many small midwestern cities; an old time feel without a lot of progress, deep cultural connections, in this case German and a strong work ethic. I was with Kimball for 8 years and only spent about 2 of them in Jasper and that was over 20 years ago. For this reason I didn’t really remember much, including that Jasper has an old time city square! But that didn’t matter, I remembered drinking at the Schnitz and some friends that I haven’t seen for ages and did not look up this time…too short, but someday.
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Then another 7 hours in the car to visit the University of Missouri at Columbia. Here they have a beautiful 25 year old Bösendorfer 290 Imperial. Instead of being stuck in the basement jazz lab, it proudly occupies the stage in the small primary recital hall. This piano has been well cared for but really needs some routine maintenance, including new hammers, strings and a set of whippens. The problem with high end pianos is that the tone deteriorates very slowly so even though people still claim to love this piano, I know that what they are hearing is a mere shadow of how it should and could sound. It has gobs of sustain so again, there is a beautiful piano lurking under a worn out set of hammers.
The new technician there, Lucy Erlacher, is great and dedicated to the idea of tonal diversity, and we’re going to help her anyway we can.
Fall means catching up on some travel and I headed south to the Orlando area and Naples. I flew into and out of Orlando, driving down to Naples and back. This is a bit of a drive but I had a pretty nice car due to an upgrade from Hertz.
I visited my dealer who also handles Steingraeber and saw my first Steingraeber carbon fiber soundboard. The idea here is NOT that carbon fiber works as well as wood. I heard it and it doesn’t. The point is that this allows high quality pianos to be installed in hostile (at least to pianos) environments that would ordinarily eat soundboards for lunch. My understanding is the the Moscow Conservatory owns a couple of these and that makes sense. Harsh climate, long cold winters, old facilities with no chance of adding enough humidity to the bone dry winters. This board sounds reasonable enough over most of the expanse of the keyboard. The tone is a little off but the sustain is good and the action of course feels completely normal.
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I’m a fan of trying something new and this is a great way of addressing one of the biggest traditional problems in the piano world; low humidity. That it comes from such a small, old world maker as Steingraeber is great. As you will see in a later post, soundboards are not the only thing Steingraeber is experimenting with.
