Steinway Sons

The message of "Pianomania" is a simple one: to make the kind of beautiful music the great classical pianists create, you have to be obsessed with the search for the perfect sound. And you need the perfect accomplice as well. Which is where Stefan Knüpfer comes in. Officially known as the chief technician and master tuner for the Austrian branch of the great piano firm Steinway & Sons (already the subject of another fine documentary, "Note by Note: The Making of Steinway L1037")

Hours before showtime at UCLA's Royce Hall, Teri Meredyth leaned into a new Steinway & Sons concert grand piano. Behind her, stagehands hammered together a stage extension. In front, workers shoved into place wooden panels for a backdrop. Stage left, an electrician shouted to a colleague aiming spotlights. Meredyth, the hall's longtime piano technician, pounded the keys of the 9-foot-long grand, listening for off-kilter harmonics. She tweaked tuning pins and pricked felt hammers with a needle to soften them and thus warm the tone that would be produced when they hit the strings.

The Feb. 12 Morning Report item "Out of Tune" grossly misrepresented the actual jury verdict in the Dan Lofing suit brought in Sacramento Superior Court. While I understand and appreciate Calendar's requirements for brevity, such requirements should not come at the expense of an accurate presentation of the essential facts. Specifically, regarding the outcome of the Lofing suit: The jury found against Lofing's claims for damages of $385,000 and against his allegations of fraud, mental distress and breach of expressed warranty.

The message of "Pianomania" is a simple one: to make the kind of beautiful music the great classical pianists create, you have to be obsessed with the search for the perfect sound. And you need the perfect accomplice as well. Which is where Stefan Knüpfer comes in. Officially known as the chief technician and master tuner for the Austrian branch of the great piano firm Steinway & Sons (already the subject of another fine documentary, "Note by Note: The Making of Steinway L1037")

The world's leading maker of top-of-the-line concert-quality pianos has decided that a new line of Japanese-made pianos it will begin selling next year will not use the famous Steinway & Sons brand name carried on its famous handcrafted instruments. The announcement came after earlier reports of Steinway's deal to have Japanese piano maker Kawai Musical Instruments mass produce a new line of mid-priced instruments created a furor among loyal U.S.

When is a Steinway not a Steinway? When it's made in Japan under the brand name Boston, as creators of the new line of mid-priced pianos emphatically point out. But the name of New York City-based Steinway & Sons, makers of the best-known concert pianos since the mid-19th Century, looms large in the tangled lineage of the Boston, which was unveiled to a group of national Steinway dealers here Thursday. The Boston Piano Co.

Like the tiny hammers inside a grand piano, the workrooms at the Steinway & Sons piano factory are seemingly insignificant on their own, but together they create something beautiful. The warehouse-sized rooms are filled with stacks of unfinished piano skeletons--thick strips of hard maple molded to form the curvaceous outline of a concert grand. Amid the smell of sawdust and varnish, there also are carved wooden legs, massive metal sound boards and, yes, small felt hammers.

Like stately ocean liners about to set sail, the grand pianos roll down an assembly line of craftsmen, black, elegant and silent. The instruments, a marriage of ancient wood and high-tech engineering, have a mission: Prove that Japan can make a world-class, luxury piano fine enough to challenge the gold standard of the music industry--the Steinway grand piano. It is an audacious gambit for their maker, the Kawai Musical Instrument Manufacturing Co.

CBS said Friday that it has sold Steinway & Sons, the piano maker, to a group of Boston businessmen for an undisclosed sum. The investor group also bought the three remaining components of CBS' music instrument manufacturing operations: Elkhart, Ind.-based Gemeinhardt, which makes flutes and piccolos; Chicago-based Lyon & Healy Harps, and Hillsboro, Ore.-based Rodgers Organ Co. Both CBS and the investors declined at a news conference to reveal the sales price of the four properties.

Steinway & Sons, the venerable piano-manufacturing company, has long had a reputation for musical quality and tradition. The name alone evokes images of gleaming black grand pianos adorning elegant drawing rooms and international concert stages. With the company's 300,000th instrument in the East Room of the White House, the firm figured that something even more special would be on tap when the 500,000th Steinway was produced. There is, and it's here in Los Angeles, third stop on a world tour.

Like stately ocean liners about to set sail, the grand pianos roll down an assembly line of craftsmen, black, elegant and silent. The instruments, a marriage of ancient wood and high-tech engineering, have a mission: Prove that Japan can make a world-class, luxury piano fine enough to challenge the gold standard of the music industry--the Steinway grand piano. It is an audacious gambit for their maker, the Kawai Musical Instrument Manufacturing Co.

Like the tiny hammers inside a grand piano, the workrooms at the Steinway & Sons piano factory are seemingly insignificant on their own, but together they create something beautiful. The warehouse-sized rooms are filled with stacks of unfinished piano skeletons--thick strips of hard maple molded to form the curvaceous outline of a concert grand. Amid the smell of sawdust and varnish, there also are carved wooden legs, massive metal sound boards and, yes, small felt hammers.

The Feb. 12 Morning Report item "Out of Tune" grossly misrepresented the actual jury verdict in the Dan Lofing suit brought in Sacramento Superior Court. While I understand and appreciate Calendar's requirements for brevity, such requirements should not come at the expense of an accurate presentation of the essential facts. Specifically, regarding the outcome of the Lofing suit: The jury found against Lofing's claims for damages of $385,000 and against his allegations of fraud, mental distress and breach of expressed warranty.

Where art and commerce meet, there may be a profit. That seems to be the hope of Steinway Musical Properties, which this week introduced in New York and here in Orange, the products of its new, fourth subsidiary, the Boston Piano Co. "Designed by Steinway & Sons," and manufactured at a plant in Ryuyo, Japan, the new line of instruments--not including, incidentally, a concert grand--promises much for the so-called mid-price range, the range below the cost of a Steinway.

Where art and commerce meet, there may be a profit. That seems to be the hope of Steinway Musical Properties, which this week introduced in New York and here in the City of Orange, the products of its new, fourth subsidiary, the Boston Piano Co. "Designed by Steinway & Sons," and manufactured at a plant in Ryuyo, Japan, the new line of instruments--not including, incidentally, a concert grand--promises much for the so-called mid-price range, the range below the cost of a Steinway.

When is a Steinway not a Steinway? When it's made in Japan under the brand name Boston, as creators of the new line of mid-priced pianos emphatically point out. But the name of New York City-based Steinway & Sons, makers of the best-known concert pianos since the mid-19th Century, looms large in the tangled lineage of the Boston, which was unveiled to a group of national Steinway dealers here Thursday. The Boston Piano Co.

Where art and commerce meet, there may be a profit. That seems to be the hope of Steinway Musical Properties, which this week introduced in New York and here in Orange, the products of its new, fourth subsidiary, the Boston Piano Co. "Designed by Steinway & Sons," and manufactured at a plant in Ryuyo, Japan, the new line of instruments--not including, incidentally, a concert grand--promises much for the so-called mid-price range, the range below the cost of a Steinway.

The world's leading maker of top-of-the-line concert-quality pianos has decided that a new line of Japanese-made pianos it will begin selling next year will not use the famous Steinway & Sons brand name carried on its famous handcrafted instruments. The announcement came after earlier reports of Steinway's deal to have Japanese piano maker Kawai Musical Instruments mass produce a new line of mid-priced instruments created a furor among loyal U.S.