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Lifting the lid on Steinways' two distinctive sounds
James Barron/NYT NYT
Thursday, August 28, 2003
The New York Times
Pianos with accents: A trans-Atlantic etude
HAMBURG In 1850, when Heinrich Engelhard Steinweg left for New York and changed his name to Henry E. Steinway, four of
his five sons immigrated with him.The fifth, C.F. Theodor Steinway, stayed behind. He hated America - "that land of iniquity,"
with its unbearable weather and uncouth concertgoers. So when his father and brothers started a piano company in New York,
Theodor, the technical genius of the family, sent his ideas for improving the instruments via trans-Atlantic mail.
He moved to New York in 1865, but went back to Germany regularly until 1880, when he went back for good. He opened the
company's second plant here. It was part laboratory, part factory. While he tinkered with new sounding boards and rims, workers
manufactured pianos according to the same designs used at the factory in New York - instruments that, because of his innovations,
gave Steinways the big, bright sound that defined the modern piano.
Steinway Sons still makes pianos in Hamburg. But they are a bit different from their American cousins. Many pianists maintain
that Hamburg Steinways tend to sound lusher, warmer and somehow smaller than Steinways from New York.
So there is not one Steinway sound, but two. When concert grand No. K0862 was being trimmed in the case-making department
of the factory in Astoria, Queens, in June, it took on characteristics that marked it as a New Yorker. What would be different
if it were being made in Germany? What does the Hamburg factory do differently
The factory looks like the one in New York - a cluster of red-brick buildings. But the Hamburg factory - whose windows
were blown out in an Allied bombing raid during World War II - today is smaller, brighter and cleaner. It also continues C.F.
Theodor's laboratory tradition. Much of the precision cutting and drilling machinery installed in the New York plant was tried
in Hamburg first.
There are pianists who prefer a Hamburg Steinway. The workmanship is better, they maintain. "It's like an upgraded
American Steinway, and there's nothing to sneeze at in the American Steinway," said the pianist and arranger Wally Harper.
Hamburg Steinways, he said, "seem to be more sensitive and have a wider range of dynamics." But the pianist Jeffrey
Siegel said the difference was more in the touch than in the sound. "I'm not so sure anymore that one can generalize
about the tonal quality," he said.
Bruce Stevens, the president of Steinway Sons, says he is not worried that some customers may find Hamburg Steinways superior
to New York Steinways. "When people ask which is the better piano, I say, 'We have the No. 1 and the No. 2,'" he
said, without specifying which he considers first and which second. Hamburg Steinways cost more in the United States than
New York Steinways. A Hamburg concert grand sells for about $97,800, about $5,000 more than a comparable New York Steinway
like No. K0862. "What we try to do is keep it on parity," said Frank Mazurco, Steinway's executive vice president,
"because the exchange rate plays games with products like this."
One difference between a New York Steinway and a Hamburg Steinway is recognizable from the outside: the shape of the arms,
the part of the case at either end of the keyboard. On a New York Steinway, the curve of the arm ends in a sharp corner -
a Sheraton arm, named for Thomas Sheraton, the 18th-century furniture designer. On a Hamburg Steinway, the edge is rounded.
Once, New York Steinways had rounded arms, too. Mazurco says the New York factory switched to the Sheraton arm around 1910.
Just inside the lid is another marker. The Hamburg factory uses reddish African mahogany for one layer of the rim, the
layer that ends up next to the piano's sounding board and the cast iron plate that holds the strings. In New York, that last
layer has long been made of maple and spray-painted black with the rest of the case. The mahogany is "a marketing question,"
said Werner Husmann, a vice president who has worked for Steinway in Hamburg for 35 years.
Other differences between the way No. K0862 was being made and the way Hamburg Steinways are made became clear during
two days at the Hamburg plant. The first big step in the making of a piano - bending the rim - took the same amount of time
in Hamburg as in New York: 14 minutes. But in Hamburg the job was done by three workers, plus a foreman. In New York, it takes
six or seven, plus a foreman.
The managers of the Hamburg factory said they did not need as large a crew because, after gluing the strips of wood together,
their workers load the slabs onto carts and roll them to the rim-bending machine. In New York, the workers carry the 340-pound,
or 154-kilogram, slabs from the gluing machine to the rim-bending device.
And where the New York rim-benders use long-handled levers to shove the rim wood into place, members of the Hamburg team
wheel in a machine with a hydraulic arm that does some of the work without grunting, groaning or sweating. Are human hands
better than hydraulic arms when it comes to driving wood into place? 'We hear people talking," Husmann said. "'Steinway
hates machines.' 'Steinway loves machines.' 'What is your relationship to machines?' It's simple. A machine has to provide
an increase in quality. We are not the people who believe we can do everything with machines. We do 85 percent by hand."
Like the New York factory, Hamburg has a lumberyard where wood sits, aging. Since the 1990's the Hamburg factory has used
much of the same wood as New York - maple from the American Pacific Northwest for the rims, spruce from Alaska for the sounding
boards.
Two major differences between a New York Steinway and a Hamburg Steinway are deeper inside. One is the action - the sensitive,
complicated, see-saw mechanism inside the piano that drives a hammer toward its string when a pianist hits a key. The action
exists to do one crucial job: translate the touch of the pianist into motion. It converts the delicateness of Debussy or the
explosiveness of Shostakovich into what the audience hears.
The other difference is the hammers themselves. On a New York Steinway, the action and the hammers are made at the factory
by Steinway workers. On a Hamburg Steinway, both parts are bought from subcontractors who follow Steinway's specifications.
Steinway says the difference in the hammers matters more.
In Hamburg, Steinway uses hammers with hard felt, and the workers make them softer with needles and sandpaper. In New
York, Steinway uses hammers with softer felt, and the workers make them harder by painting a gooey solution onto the head
of each hammer. The solution, lacquer and lacquer thinners, adds strength, and that increases the volume and brightness of
the sound. "This is a process that takes longer," Husmann said. "We shape it to the right shape, voice it,
listen to it."
In a soundproof room at the Hamburg factory, Erich Lagemann spends seven hours a day sanding the tops of hammers to just
the right shape. Then he slides the action into the piano, playing a few chords and then sliding it out for more work.
"The fit and finish, I think, is a little better here," he said. He paused. He did not want that to sound like
a put-down of New York Steinways or those who make them. The only thing that matters, he said, is the final result, the sound.
"New York is O.K.," he said, "and this is O.K."
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