Steinway & Sons produces some of the world’s finest pianos, the same way they’ve built them for the past 150 years. They make each instrument by hand, using career-long craftspeople who pass their skills on to succeeding generations. The company has never moved its headquarters from New York City’s Astoria neighborhood because, well, piano makers are hard to find these days. Kind of like pianos themselves.
Think about it. When was the last time you actually saw a piano? The classic musical instrument used to find a spot in the living rooms of a lot of homes. Nicer homes even had “music rooms”, with a baby grand proudly on display in the middle. The assumption was, these pianos were actually played instead of simply for looks. Playing the piano used to suggest a more refined upbringing. Today they’re a little harder to find.
The piano is considered a “foundational” instrument; that is, a good place to learn to read and play music. Eventually most move on to another musical instrument, be that woodwind, brass, string, or percussion. Not me. I started (and ended) with the piano. A good eight years – second to tenth grade or so – included weekly lessons and monthly recitals, with hours upon hours of practice on our living room grand piano. Even though high school ultimately pulled me into other interests, the piano entered my DNA (as did classical music). It’s part of who I am.
Over the decades since those long-ago lessons, the piano keeps showing up in my life as a reminder of its significance. The year I started college, a movie called The Competition was released, an entire film about piano starring a young Richard Dreyfuss and younger Amy Irving. I still have a copy of the film on DVD. Also in college, I one day wandered into the halls of our school of music to discover a dozen small practice rooms, each with an upright piano. As it turned out, these rooms were open to any student, and so the piano became my escape as I worked through the stresses of an architecture degree.
When I got married, my wife – who couldn’t afford a Steinway back then (and still can’t) – presented me with a Korg digital keyboard. A poor man’s piano if you will, but with the touch and sound of the real thing. Almost forty years later that keyboard still works, sitting quietly upstairs in one of our bedrooms.
Four years ago, as many of you read back then, my wife gave another nod to the keyboard when she gave me the LEGO Grand Piano for Christmas. Building and blogging about that beautiful model one chapter at a time over several months was a captivating adventure, including all of the classical music I re-listened to along the way. The LEGO models I build now will never surpass the Grand Piano, which sits proudly on its own shelf in my home office.
Four years ago also brought me, unexpectedly, my first real piano. My daughter and her family bought a nearby house, where the previous owners left an old, upright Baldwin behind. I found it very sad: a lonely, neglected piano, probably not played for years, inevitably out of tune and in need of repair. So I came to its rescue, hiring a piano mover to get it to our house, and a tuner to restore it to fighting shape. Today that piano sits in our living room. It doesn’t match any of our furniture. It doesn’t get played as often as it should. But it warms my heart just to see it there, and that’s all that really matters.
Recently, the grand piano of my youth resurfaced. It had been sitting in storage for several years, lost among my parents’ many belongings, waiting patiently for another owner. It seemed it would never find another home until – go figure – the Methodist church I grew up in had a need for one. So the piano was wrapped up, trucked up, and placed in the church’s social hall, where it will be restored and played as it was meant to be. To me that feels like the completion one of life’s many circles. The very piano that brought me so much music ends up in the church that brought me so much of a faith life.
Just like my wife, I will never be able to afford a Steinway & Sons masterpiece piano. Neither my budget nor my modest keyboard talent are deserving of such a beautiful instrument. But not to worry. I have my modest Baldwin upright to keep me company. It brings back a lot of keyboard memories. And there are sure to be more.
Some content sourced from the CNN Business article, “How a company from the Gilded Age…”, and Wikipedia, “the free encyclopedia”.
Life In A Word 
Kind of crazy to think a piano can cost more than a house! I remember Santa brought me a keyboard one year, but I could only play a few notes of songs. I always wished I could play, it’s a nice party trick.
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I’ve always wanted to play a round at Pebble Beach but my golf game is just not worthy of a world-class course. That’s how I feel about a Steinway piano 🙂
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My mom was the pianist in our family and classical music was what she played almost exclusively. I count myself fortunate to have been raised to understand and appreciate the music she loved!
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My dad played as well, but my mom gets the credit for pushing me and my brothers into music lessons. I think she was more about that “refined” approach to raising kids.
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Dave, Steinways are beautiful, but that’s a steep price to pay for them – you really need the space for them as well. How nice you were able to rescue that piano and restore it to tickle the ivories once again and also to donate your family piano to your former church. I never took piano lessons, but I did learn the keyboard when I took accordion lessons in Canada, starting at age seven and continuing until age 10, then we moved here to the U.S. and no one offered accordion lessons, so the accordion languishes in its case downstairs. Like you, a lot of practice time was needed on a daily basis and I’m sure I drove my parents crazy with the same piece over and over again until the next lesson. The Ontario Conservatory of Music also had recitals for its young music students and we played for nursing homes at Christmastime, so there were more hours of practice to learn all the Christmas songs.
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My brother played the accordion, and the position of the keyboard always fascinated me since it was essentially vertical (while the piano’s is horizontal). We both learned to play without looking at the keys but I still always marveled how he could do that, not to mention multitask with the buttons and bellows!
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Your brother probably had a “starter accordion” in the beginning. I did for a year, just 12 bass keys and an abbreviated keyboard. It was easier to use than the full-size accordion. They are unwieldy instruments to manage if you’re a kid to be honest. It’s been 60 years since I touched the accordion, but if I remember correctly, you can’t see the keyboard or the bass keys, especially while using the bellows, so you had to memorize them. One bass key had an indentation in it, so you knew where to position your left hand. At recitals the accordion players couldn’t sit too close to allow for the bellows! 🙂
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Little ol’ me with my first big accordion:
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Feel free to delete the comment/photo after you see it. 🙂
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My mother bought a piano similar to your upright, when she was in her 60’s and taught herself to play (she could read music from playing Hawaiian guitar when she was younger). After she passed away and we cleansed out her house, I had mostly emptied it but took my time about getting rid of the piano, but then we got an unexpected offer on the house with a quick closing date in two weeks time and I had to find someone to take it right away! I tried nursing homes, churches, music teachers, etc no luck, (no one wants a piano anymore, it’s all keyboards and guitars) and was starting to panic and think I might just have to leave it there. Finally a music teacher passed along the phone number of a woman who wanted it for her two little kids who were just starting lessons, and I was so happy to get rid of it that I paid for half of the moving. I had the movers there anyway, to take some last minute furniture to the Goodwill, although they had to send 4 guys to move it. (another reason why no one wants a free piano) Later she sent me a photo of her kids (they looked maybe 4 and 6?) sitting on the piano bench banging away on the keys. I know my mother would have been happy that it went to a good home.
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It’s a good story, Joni, better than most I’m hearing lately about old or neglected pianos. People don’t seem to have the time, money, or room in their houses for them, which I find sad. I hope there’s somehow a resurgence in the interest (and value) in playing musical instruments. I can’t think of a better reason to counter too much time on our electronic devices!
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I had a similar stroke of good luck when I found a young family willing to take my mother’s piano off our hands when we were cleaning out her house. I was happy that someone could use it. The story of my own old upright piano (from pre-1900) was likely less successful. I am quite sure it was broken up and destroyed by the company that took it away. (I wrote about it here: https://jpcavanaugh.com/2018/12/14/killing-a-piano/ ) Their numbers are probably down now, but 20 years ago old upright pianos from the 1920’s or before were in everyone’s basement or garage, and had zero value in all but a few cases. It broke my heart to send it to its uncertain fate, but I had to get it out of the house.
As someone who owned a vintage upright, I would argue that yours is more of a spinet or a console. Mine was a “miniature upright” which had a shorter board than a “full upright”. I loved the resonant sound from the bigger piano compared to that of my mother’s 1950’s-era spinet.
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So, the big question is… Do you play the piano or just look at it with nostalgia?
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I play occasionally, and a lot during the holiday season. I’ll pick up the pace now that I have a three-year old granddaughter. Time to get her going on musical instruments!
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Absolutely, teach the grandchildren!!
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