12,000 parts for the perfect sound

The instrument with 88 white and black keys is an absolute all-rounder and perhaps the most popular musical instrument of all.* It can be found in children’s rooms as well as in the spotlights of the world’s biggest concert stages. To find out what makes the instrument so fascinating, we asked people who know all about it: Concert pianists, piano technicians and the manufacturer Steinway & Sons, who have been instrumental in defining the shape of concert grand pianos today.

What many people don’t know is that the first hammer-action keyboard instruments were built as early as the 15th century, the time of the clavichord and harpsichord. It was not until the early 18th century that fortepianos were produced in large numbers. The Italian piano maker Bartolomeo Cristofori was the first to develop the hammer action. He called his first pianos »cimbali con piano e forte«. The name pianoforte is still used today for historical pianos. The new feature of the hammer action: The hammer strikes the string more or less strongly, depending on the force with which it is struck. At last it was possible to play the piano at different volumes – hence the name »piano e forte«, Italian for »soft and loud«.

Nevertheless, many musicians continued to play the harpsichord for a long time. This was because the new fortepianos sounded dull, were expensive to make and complicated to maintain. Over the course of the 18th century, however, piano makers continued to refine the hammer action. Perhaps it is no coincidence that the Industrial Revolution broke out in Europe at the same time: the new instrument underwent a revolution in music technology, making it louder, more brilliant, larger and more robust. At the beginning of the 19th century, it was Ludwig van Beethoven, one of the most eager innovators among pianists, who worked with manufacturers to push the limits of the instrument.

»It is certain that the way of playing the clavier is still the most uncultivated of all instruments, one often believes to hear only a harp, and I am rather glad that you are one of the few who realise and feel that one can also sing on the clavier as soon as one can only feel, I hope that the time will come when the harp and the clavier will be two completely different instruments.«  

- Beethoven in a letter to the piano maker J. A. Streicher, 1796

Beethoven corresponded extensively with various piano makers and followed every innovation. During his lifetime, the keyboard of a fortepiano was extended by several octaves. The English design by makers such as Thomas Broadwood, with its reed action, heavy hammers and increased tension on the strings and body, moved the sound of a fortepiano even further away from the thin, harp-like sound that Beethoven complained about in his letter to the Viennese piano maker Streicher. Beethoven’s piano sonatas partly reflect the advances in piano construction. During his lifetime, the Sonata »für das große Hammerklavier« (»for the large fortepiano«) op. 106 was considered unplayable on the grand pianos of the time; it was, so to speak, a piece of science fiction for the grand piano of the future.

Today, pianos come in all shapes, sizes and price ranges. But the grand piano dominates the classical music scene – even the grand piano made by one company: Steinway & Sons. Founded in New York in the mid-19th century, the company now makes instruments for almost every concert pianist and stage in the world.

There are very personal answers to the question of what makes the ideal piano. Japanese pianist Kiana Reid describes her perfect piano this way:

»I like a rich bass and singing high notes: not too bright, but singing. The keys shouldn’t be too heavy, but not too light. If you try something and the piano understands it immediately, that’s a perfect piano for me. Sometimes you try to do something, but the piano says: ›I don’t care!‹ That happens.«

The ideal piano: a mixture of individual sound design and mechanical balance. This is how Thomas Lepler, piano technician at Steinway & Sons, describes it:

»A good concert grand has everything in terms of colour and dynamics, from the softest pianissimo to a very powerful fortissimo. The weight of the keys and the touch must also be perfect. The piano must have very good repeatability. All the notes, from the lowest to the highest, must be of good quality, so that each register can be heard evenly and clearly.«

For an instrument that has to meet perfect quality standards, the demands on the piano maker are high. It starts with the technology itself: a Steinway grand contains 12,000 parts made from natural materials that are assembled by hand over the course of a year-long production process. Ann-Paulin Steigerwald, Head of Concerts & Artists at Steinway, describes the special sound of a Steinway:

»You know it when you touch a Steinway. You feel the highest quality and fantastic sound. Some people say that you can recognise a Steinway by its particularly long notes, i.e. the sustain of the sound, and that the instruments have a particularly wide range of colours and are rich in overtones.«

The secrets of piano sound are complex. This is because the piano in its present form is a mechanically sophisticated system. The sound depends on two different factors: the construction of the shell in the piano factory and the subsequent mechanical fine-tuning carried out by a piano technician on the finished piano. Ann-Paulin Steigerwald explains:

»The instrument can still be greatly altered by the action. But it makes a huge difference how the body is put together: The body or rim, the soundboard, the metal plate and the first set of strings. After that, you can do a lot with the hammers and the different key settings and intonations.«

The finished piano is largely made of wood: a material that reacts to environmental influences and continues to ›move‹ after construction, as piano technician Thomas Lepler says. Playing also changes the hammers and the felt becomes harder. A piano technician can influence the sound of the hammer mechanism to a great extent.

»When I set up a piano, I usually start with the action. You can make it smoother and faster. Anything you do to the action also improves the sound and the overtones. Then I work on the hammers.«

These two steps are called regulation and intonation. Regulation ensures that the hammer action moves smoothly and evenly. The technician also ensures that the different registers, or pitch ranges, of the piano are set as evenly as possible. The aim is to regulate the key resistance as evenly as possible – in the words of Kiana Reid, »not too heavy and not too light«. Intonation affects the sound: the piano technician works on the felt of the hammers with small burins, softening hardened areas and thus determining how brilliant or soft the key sounds. Thomas Lepler sums it up this way:

»When working on intonation, I have to make the sound more even and bring out all the dynamics that should be present in the piano, from pianissimo to fortissimo, so that all the registers have the same colour and the same dynamics. We technicians can get the last few per cent out of an instrument to bring it to its maximum: We make it shine and come alive.«

Surprisingly, despite standardised quality standards and construction methods, each piano can sound very different. Natural materials always behave differently – and intonation allows a piano technician to create a range of tonal nuances according to the pianist’s wishes. As a result, no two Steinways sound alike. Then there is the wide variety of other piano brands, each with their own tonal characteristics. Andrey Denisenko, a pianist from Russia, loves the variety of pianos:

»I really like this variety of instruments. It’s good for us concert pianists. You can get used to playing on just one instrument and being perfect on it. That can work well, you know what you’re doing and how you’re doing it. But sometimes it’s good to play different instruments, to experiment. Because then you end up in a situation where you don’t know exactly how it works, the sound is different every time. Even with instruments of one brand it’s like that.«

The piano is perhaps the instrument that has undergone the greatest technical evolution. And it is still evolving. Automatic pianos have been popular since the early 20th century: music was stored on punched cards or cylinders and could be played on these instruments. In the 1980s, Japanese manufacturer Yamaha digitalised this idea with its »Disklavier«. It is now possible to record a complete performance using sensors in the piano, store it digitally and play it back on such an instrument: An ingenious combination of analogue instrument and digital recording technology that allows a recorded interpretation to be experienced up close. Steinway is now building this technology under the name »Spirio«.

The format of the piano is also becoming more innovative. Ann-Paulin Steigerwald gives a brief insight into Steinway’s development department:

»Harmonic damping has been developed together with pianists for about 5 years. The damping is adjusted in such a way that you can no longer hear any in-between noises. It also allows something like quarter and half pedalling. This allows you to develop completely new tonal colours.«

Experiments with additional keys have also been carried out since 1900, for example by Bösendorfer, whose »Imperial« grand inspired composers such as Ferruccio Busoni, Béla Bartók and Claude Debussy. A few years ago, the Australian manufacturer Stuart & Sons introduced a model with an extended range, for which new works have already been written. There are also experiments with materials, such as the carbon-fibre piano developed by the pianist Gergely Bogányi in collaboration with piano makers. The piano is not only independent of humidity and temperature, but also has its own novel sound. As in Beethoven’s time, the creative dialogue between technology and people, piano makers and musicians, is far from over. 

* Figures on the popularity of the piano in German-speaking countries can be found at the German Music Information Centre: The statistics on the most frequently chosen instruments in instrumental lessons show that the piano has been the leading instrument for decades.