The morning began with a tour of the inside of the factory.  Steinway is widely accepted as the most finely made and best sounding piano around for centuries.  They are proud of their heritage and their position of esteem in the piano world, and rightly so.  The first part of the tour was perhaps the most dramatic.  We got to watch the creation of the rounded piano case.  Long strips of rock-hard maple were fed through a machine which coated them with a special glue.  It takes eight strips of laminate glued together to create the inside rim of the piano, and another nine strips to make the actual outside case of the piano.  Steinway is apparently the only piano manufacturer that bends the inner frame and the outer frame together at the same time, creating better strength and cohesion.  After the 17 strips of laminate became one 300 pound timber of wood, that timber was taken, carried by at least six men, over to the rim press.  It was unbelievable to watch as the wood was bent into the shape of the piano frame, and was then held in place by huge iron vices.  We onlookers were even invited to participate in the process of helping to tighten the screws that hold the vices onto the wood frame.  I helped bend the rim on a brand new Steinway D!  It stays there in the press overnight and then gets taken to a drying room, where it spends 4 months in a very hot, very humid environment which smells strongly of formaldehyde based glue.

Next we visited the veneer room. A sign over the door proclaimed “Crown Jewel Veneer Room.”  Here we learned that the veneer of every piano comes from one single tree.  That is the only way to create pieces of veneer that match perfectly.  The pieces are carefully selected (by eye, not by robot or computer) and glued together.  The most amazing piece of information I learned in this room is that when a piano is made, the veneer from that particular tree is labeled and saved.  There was 1.5 million dollars worth of wood in that room!  When a piano falls into disrepair and needs veneer work done, the wood from the very tree that was used for the original can be looked up, found, and that wood is then used for repairs.  Our tour guide, the lovely and informative Nicole Martini, told us a story of a piano built in the late 1800′s which needed veneer work done, and they were able to locate the very material that was used for the original veneer.  Incredible.

The soundboard room was also fascinating.  Wood for soundboards is chosen from a special forest, the Sitka Forest in Alaska, with which Steinway has had a relationship for a hundred years.  150 year old spruce trees are selected from this forest.  There is apparently C grade wood, B grade wood, A grade wood… and then there is Steinway grade wood!  Once the wood arrives and is assembled into the soundboard, an artisan in this room examines each one for any tiny blemish, crack or crevice, removes it with a special tool, cuts wood from another matching piece of wood, and fills the hole seamlessly.  The tiny piece of wood is glued in place and held there with a long bowed stick which is leveraged against the ceiling to produce 500 pounds of pressure on the glued area to assure cohesion.

We visited the drying room, where piano rims stand vertically, row upon row, and so tall you can stand in them.  The pounding room was also a revelation – a special machine depresses all the keys at once, to loosen up the action of the piano and I suppose to start the breaking in process.  (Any new piano requires at least 50 hours of playing time before it is truly broken in.)

The level of craftsmanship is undeniable and unbelievable. In a world that values quick, cheap, mass production, it was truly astounding to realize the level of by hand artisanship that is still being practiced in this factory, day after day.  And  as a pianist who spends every day of my life playing these instruments, it was fascinating and truly exhilarating to see the process by which they are born.

Arriving in a stretch limo, courtesy of Steinway & Sons!

Arriving at the Steinway Factory in Queens

The marquis at Steinway, announcing our arrival

Learning about how the rim of a Steinway is bent

Watching as the rim of a Steinway is bent!!!!

The socket wrench for tightening those bolts. HEAVY.

rrrrrrrr!

Hall of drying piano rims

Genevieve Lee, Teresa Ling, Lura Johnson, Tobi Werner, Jaime LeTourneau, Eveylen Grau (from left)

Soundboard Repair

Down to business

The Chosen One!

More blog entries found here…

My next project was a collaboration with the Martha Graham Ballet Company and the Kennedy Center Opera Orchestra, which presented a production of Clytemnestra in the Kennedy Center’s Eisenhower Theatre. These dancers are so impressive with the incredible flexbility and sharp angular movements called for by the choreography. My own situation for this show was particularly challenging.  Given the size of the orchestra pit, it was impossible for the percussion instruments and the 9 foot Steinway grand to be in the pit with the other instrumentalists, which necessitated us being housed in another part of the backstage area, with access to the conductor via monitor and audio feed.  In the photo below, you can see my piano in the wings, a dancer onstage, and the monitor which allowed me to see the conductor.

Read reviews from the New York Times, Baltimore Sun, and Washington Post

Thank goodness Antonino D’Urzo knows where to plug all those wires in.  I have trouble connecting my TV to my DVD player!

Clara needed constant attention from technician Peter Cohn: silencing pedal squeaks, touching up the tuning, and voicing….

It was a great week, and we are now in the painstaking process of editing. What a lot of difficult and demanding work, and yet how rewarding….

On another note, the piano was restored under the supervision of technician C. Dean Shank, of Rice University‘s Shepherd School of Music (I am a proud alum!), is cared for regularly by technician Caleb Tsai and will be cared for during the duration of the recording session by technician Peter Cohn. Antonino D’Urzo of Opusrite Audio Productions is the sound engineer and producer, and the disc will be released by Centaur Records in Summer 2010.

And if you want to come over for dinner, this week would be an excellent time, as I actually have a dining room now! Amazing how much bigger the room feels without a 7 foot behemoth of a piano in it…

and to be fair, I should show this other picture from the same date. I had just barely begun cello lessons. That’s my older brother, Nils, on violin, and my parents.

Gene enjoyed our reading of the sonata very much. She said to us “My impression of you two is that you play this piece with real strength.” And also added that our performance of it meant a great deal to her and that she would carry it with her. She told many stories of famous performers and composers – Samuel Barber (whom she called “Sam”), “Oh, that Ormandy!” And “that violinist who always seems to be playing the Mendelssohn!” (Perlman) It was a treat to spend time with her and it was inspiring to hear her talk of so many people who left such a mark on the art world.

Here are some pictures from our visit.

And for anyone who’s wondering….. I intend to wear high heels and speak my mind when I’M 89 1/2! Stick around and find out!