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Pianists remember pianos.

Not necessarily because they were exceptional instruments. Sometimes quite the opposite! We remember the piano in a childhood home, the battered upright in a school music room, a particularly lovely grand encountered at a teacher’s house, an instrument played in a concert hall, or a piano discovered unexpectedly somewhere far from home. We remember their touch and sound, the peculiarities of their actions, even the smell of the room in which they stood. And sometimes we remember them because of the people who played them before us.

The piano is a machine, but it usually has a soul, and a history too. My 1913 C. Bechstein Model A is redolent of Edwardian drawing rooms. It may well have been sold from the Bechstein piano showroom on Wigmore Street, next door to Bechstein – now Wigmore – Hall, in that golden year when a carefree generation was teetering on the abyss of the First World War. I acquired it in 2013, exactly a century after it was made, a coincidence which seemed especially serendipitous and significant, given the subject matter of the novel I had begun writing some ten years earlier.

Some years ago, I played a Steinway D with a special heritage. Formerly owned by the Hallé Orchestra in Manchester, it had been played by Sviatoslav Richter and Daniel Barenboim, amongst others. “And now you are playing it!” said its owner, for whose music society I was performing. I’ve also played a square piano owned and autographed by Edward Elgar, a Pleyel said to have been played by Chopin, and an extraordinary ‘Maori’ Steinway, which had belonged to the pianist Lili Kraus. There is a danger, of course, that one can invest too much in these associations, imagining that something of former owners and players remains in the keys and strings and might somehow influence the next person who sits down to play. In reality, it is the pianist at the keyboard now who ignites the soul of the instrument and brings it to life in sound.

Given that Theo Browne, the principal character in my novel Facing the Music, is an ambitious young concert pianist, it was inevitable that pianos would feature prominently in the narrative. Theo encounters a succession of pianos as his life unfolds, each one marking a particular stage in his musical and emotional development. Later in the book, those same instruments become repositories of memory, bound to the people, places and experiences that have shaped him, so that a piano is never simply a piano, but a connection to an earlier period or version of his life.

There is his mother’s Pleyel, the piano of childhood and his earliest encounters with the instrument which will come to define him. Before there is ambition, career or even any real conception of himself as a musician, there is simply the fascination of the keyboard and the discovery of music.

At school there is a Blüthner, an instrument which becomes associated with two of the defining relationships of Theo’s musical life. Here he studies with Mr Hines, whose influence will extend far beyond piano lessons, and here too his deep friendship and musical partnership with violinist Jonathan Lane-Fox begins to take shape – a partnership which lies at the heart of the novel. Teacher and friend offer Theo different kinds of musical companionship: Mr Hines guides and challenges him, while with Jonathan he discovers the particular intimacy of making music with another person.

At Mr Hines’s home in Battersea stands his Broadwood, the piano on which Theo practises Rachmaninoff’s Third Piano Concerto, with Mr Hines beside him at the second piano, taking the orchestral reduction. The scene is charged with ambition: this is the repertoire Theo hopes will belong to his future, music of the international concert platform and the career he is beginning to imagine for himself. But the Broadwood also becomes deeply bound up with Theo’s memories of his beloved teacher, and of the musical life they shared. As the novel unfolds, it acquires a significance that reaches beyond the instrument itself.

Sir Ralph Kaufman’s Steinway has a history which long predates Theo’s first encounter with it. It belonged to Ralph’s father, Jakob, a concert pianist from Vienna, and carries with it the traces of a musical life from an earlier generation. When Theo first sits down at it, he is intimidated by its pedigree and by everything it seems to represent: “This was no ordinary instrument. It was a witness. It had travelled, and it had lived.” But as Theo’s relationship with the Kaufman family deepens, so too does his relationship with the Steinway. Gradually it acquires another layer of associations, becoming a repository not only for the Kaufman family’s musical past, but for Theo’s own memories and experiences.

And then comes the C. Bechstein concert grand at Bechstein (now Wigmore) Hall. For Theo, sitting at that piano represents arrival: the concert platform at a prestigious London venue, an audience, and the beginning of the career towards which he has been working for years.

Later, in France, Theo, now an Army officer, encounters a very different instrument: a dilapidated Érard in a château where his battalion is billeted. By then, a piano means something quite different. It is no longer primarily an instrument of ambition or professional advancement. In surroundings unimaginably distant from concert halls and daily practice, the mere presence of a keyboard offers a connection with another life.

I love the physical presence of the piano – from a domestic upright to the grandest Steinway D – as much a piece of furniture as an instrument from which to conjure sound. I love the piano’s complexity, and the way it always seems to invite us to touch it. Put a piano in a public place and people are drawn to it: they will sit down and play, while even those who cannot play are tempted to press the keys, curious to hear the sound they can make. And a piano invites repeated physical contact. Hands have pressed its keys thousands, perhaps millions, of times. Someone practised scales on it, someone struggled with a Beethoven sonata, someone played for a teacher, accompanied a friend, prepared for a concert, played badly, played wonderfully, or simply sat down one evening and played for pleasure.

Perhaps pianos do not remember us at all. My Bechstein keeps its first hundred years of history to itself. We are the ones who supply the memories. We attach people, places, pieces of music and particular periods of our lives to these complicated machines of wood and felt, wire and iron. Yet the moment someone sits at the keyboard, the machine becomes something else. It sounds, responds, resists, sings – and another memory begins.

Which pianos do you remember?

Not necessarily the finest one you have ever played, but the instrument that has stayed with you: your childhood piano, your teacher’s grand, the terrible upright in the school practice room, a concert instrument you were reluctant to leave, or a piano with a history that made you think differently as you placed your hands on its keys.

Leave a comment below or contact me with your piano memories.

Facing the Music is out now in paperback and eBook. Find out more

  • Halle Steinway
  • My C Bechstein A

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Guest post by Michael Johnson

The 88-key piano looks to be headed for a major transformation in the coming decades. The mechanism under the lid is based on a 130-year-old design and many specialists believe it is time to dispense with those delicate moving parts. As innovative Australian piano builder Wayne Stuart says, “The piano has been crying out for a rethink for over a hundred years.”

Stuart may have it right. The behemoth that once adorned middle-class salons East and West is already in steep decline.

In the long term, it looks doomed. Owners often complain these pianos occupy too much space and nobody wants to take them away – not even for free. Only three piano makers survive in the United States compared to dozens just a few years ago. Some 80 percent of piano production is now in China, mostly for the Chinese market.

The trends are downward because of declining interest in piano study in Western cultures and competition from a dizzying array of digital devices that attract our young. These gadgets require no practice time, no studying and – most importantly – no waiting. As Jean-François Dichamp of the Barcelona Superior School of Music told me recently, “Learning to interpret music demands a lot of time and maturity. It seems the new generations are not prepared for this kind of patience.”

The “acoustic” piano, sometimes known as the 88-tooth monster, is threatened from another direction, even more pressing. New electronic models – the virtual pianos –storming in from Asia are undercutting the classic piano in price and performance with digital or hybrid keyboards that feel and sound just about right. Young players love them. Yamaha, Casio, Guangzhou Pearl River, Samick, KORG, Kawai and others are competing in this transition period. Some concert pianists travel with their favorite electronic keyboard for a quiet run-through in their hotel room before a concert.

Schools and institutions, the bread-and-butter market for the industry, are showing a preference for the low cost and easy maintenance of digital systems. Sales projections are for electronic keyboards to exceed a million units worldwide annually within two years. Steinway, the market leader in acoustics, says it can produce only about 3,000 units a year.

The clunky, heavy, expensive classic piano, critics argue, may eventually end up in a museum by late in this century, displayed as beautiful furniture.

Before that happens, the acoustic piano still has some potential to change and improve. Paris musicologist and pianist Ziad Kreidy recently collected views from twelve piano builders around the world and found that most are “not satisfied with the status quo”. Ironically, they consider that the market dominance of Steinway “unfairly stopped historical evolution”. In his recent book “Keys to the Piano” (Editions Aedam Musicae) Kreidy notes that a few innovative builders who have survived Steinway’s aggressive commercial strategies aspire to offer “new possibilities for musicians, to widen acoustic horizons, to exceed Steinway and its competitors”.

German piano builder David Klavins says, for example, that new materials such as carbon fibre offer “significantly better options. In his experience, he told Kreidy, “I have discovered that virtually every aspect of the acoustic piano can be improved remarkably when and if builders begin to think outside the box…”

There is much conflicting data, however, with market forces pushing in opposite directions. But research indicates pressures are building for a “rethink” along Stuart’s and Klavins’ lines. Stuart has just delivered his first 112-key export to an amateur American pianist.

Piano innovation has a long history. When Franz Liszt joined forces with his French friend Sebastien Erard to introduce the last major improvement, the double-action piano that became the world standard in the 1770s, European music-lovers were at first stunned, then thrilled. Rapid repetition of single notes was suddenly possible. People by the thousands traveled to concert halls to hear the great Liszt demonstrate the new musical fireworks that Erard had enabled.

Liszt was the rock star of the 18th century. He roamed around Europe with his new Erard on loan, prompting some proper ladies in his audiences to faint in ecstasy as he exploited the piano’s new potential. Other players quickly followed Liszt’s example.

But it was nearly 100 years later that Heinrich Steinway industrialized the production of his improved version, and his heirs still rule the piano world today, standardized and robotized in construction. Nearly all recent improvements have been cosmetic, however, lacking any “rethink” of any consequence.

The Steinway influence has not been entirely positive. Critics such as Stuart refer to the brand as “Stoneway” for its innovation lethargy. The latest new thing is the best Steinway can manage – the Spirio. Aggressively marketed, it seems to be a toy for the very rich Chinese, delivering high-resolution recordings of leading pianists’ performances to run on a player piano in private homes. But who wants Lang Lang in their living room? Will a hologram of the Chinese showman be the next step? The technology is there.

(Image Steinway & Sons)

To be sure, most leading pianists roll out their Steinways onstage and are satisfied once the tuner wrests the strings into shape. But often at intermission, after just an hour of Chopin or Rachmaninov, the strings need further attention from a tuner as the audience looks on.

Other brands struggle to maintain smaller share of the market in Steinway’s shadow. Each has its personality, measurable in tiny advantages. Boesendorfer, Bechstein, Fazioli, Grotrian, Sauter, Shigeru Kawai, Steingraeber and Yamaha all claim to be the best. The American aphorism applies : Even if you are on the right track, you will get run over if you just sit there.

This century will almost certainly produce a new look, feel and technology for pianos – ones we are only beginning to imagine. Experiments have already appeared on the market. Klavins’ creation is seeking $6 million investment for development of his striking Model 408. Its mission, he says, is to “eliminate each and all acoustic and technological shortcomings that are associated with traditional grand pianos, including Steinway”. Fazioli builds futuristic designs custom-made for billionaires. Boesendorfer builds a 92-key “Imperial” known as the world’s most expensive piano at about $180,000. It has never caught on.

Other innovations can be found here and there. Bigger keyboards with additional octaves, sounds that will rattle your teeth, micro-tonalities that make your head swim, electronic expansions that imitate entire orchestras – or useful things like canned laughter, stormy applause and even gunshots.

More innovation is coming just over the horizon. French piano builder Stephen Paulello, a retired pioneer in innovative design, has commercialized his Opus 102 model that offers an keyboard of 102 keys. Soon he will launch a 108-key version, equal to that of Wayne Stuart’s world first, his Big Beleura.

Pianist Ashley Hribar, at the Big Beleura Australian keyboard (above) has released a CD featuring revisions of Liszt’s Mephisto Waltz No. 1 and his own Paganini Variations, among others. A listener will be surprised by the sonic range of the 108-key instrument. Ears are bound to perk up.

He and other pianists who have tried this model say they cannot imagine returning to the standard 88-key model. In this clip, Hribar calls on the deep bass and high treble to enhance “Fingerbreaker”, the Jelly Roll Morton classic.

This is not to say the world has fallen out of love with the classic piano, whatever its limitations. No instrument comes close to producing such a range of sound, loud or soft, to convey the beauty of music.

Can an estimated 60 million young Chinese students be wrong? They are studying and mastering Western piano music on the classic design. And international piano competitions now exceed 750 worldwide, attracting Asians and Europeans as well as a few Americans. Conservatories such as Curtis and Juilliard are thriving on the influx of talented fee-paying Asian students.

Leading players help keep seats filled in concert halls by staging dramatic performances in short skirts, low tops, high heels, and – for the men – eye makeup and acrobatic writhing, hair flicks and in Lang Lang’s case, the occasional wink at the house. Audiences are divided between love and hate for these excesses.

Contemporary composers are eager to contribute ideas to these experimental keyboards. A leader in this world, Prof. Kyle Gann of Bard Collage in the United States, says you must listen to his micro-tonality work over and over again to appreciate what a piano can do. His instrument uses computer technology to simulate more than 300 keys. A sample of his ethereal creations can he heard in his recent album “Hyperchromatica” which I have tested repeatedly to let it sank in. As one listener writes in the comments section of the CD, “The more you listen, the more coherent it gets.”

We are lucky to be alive as the piano undergoes this metamorphosis. It will be an unsettling, disturbing period, just as it was for Christofori, Erard and Heinrich Steinway who dared to rethink the instrument in the 18th and 19th and 20th centuries.

Now it’s our century. Now it’s our turn.

MICHAEL JOHNSON is a music critic and writer with a particular interest in piano. He has worked as a reporter and editor in New York, Moscow, Paris and London over his journalism career. He covered European technology for Business Week for five years, and served nine years as chief editor of International Management magazine and was chief editor of the French technology weekly 01 Informatique. He also spent four years as Moscow correspondent of The Associated Press. He is a regular contributor to International Piano magazine, and is the author of five books. Michael Johnson is based in Bordeaux, France. Besides English and French he is also fluent in Russian. He is a regular reviewer for this site’s sister site ArtMuseLondon.com.

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