May 19, 2025 • 38 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, when German guilds told him they didn’t need another piano manufacturer, Henry Steinway moved to America and founded Steinway & Sons, establishing a global standard of excellence embraced by everyone from Irving Berlin to Billy Joel. Here’s the story of how one man’s pursuit of the American Dream reshaped the sound of music forever.
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Speaker 1 (00:10):
This is Lee Habib, and this is our American stories.
And our next story is about a brand name we
all know, Steinway, but a man you don't know, Henry Steinway.
In the end, the story we're about to hear is
a story about resiliency and a man search for freedom.
Here's Greg Hangler.
Speaker 2 (00:36):
As guests dyne on succulent roasted fowl and mouth watering
marinated oysters, washing their palettes with ice cold champagne. Piano
music is in the air. The occasion is the opening
of the new Steinway factory in New York. On April first,
eighteen sixty A correspondent from a local newspaper declares, it
(01:01):
is conceded that the Steinway piano in make tone, sweetness,
precision and durability, is the most perfect instrument of that
class to be had anywhere in the world. The road
to victory began sixty three years earlier in Wolfshagen, a
(01:22):
small forest hamlet nestled in the slopes of the Upper
Hearts Mountains in northwest Germany, where Heinrich Steinwig, founder of
Steinway and Sons, is born. Church records reveal that the
Steinwigs were master charcoal burners. They lived in the woods, and,
like most charcoal burners, were regarded with deep suspicion by
(01:44):
townspeople who rarely saw them. Steinwig's childhood is marked by
many tragedies and twists of fate. At the age of eight,
during a harsh winter, his mother and most of his
siblings die from exposure. He is orphaned until his father
than brothers, once thought to have been killed in action,
returned from the Napoleonic Wars in Klining. Then at fifteen
(02:08):
he is orphaned once again. Penniless and living on the streets,
he seeks refuge in the German army. Two years later,
he's fighting against Napoleon at the Battle of Waterloo on
June eighteenth, eighteen fifteen. Family legend has it that when
an advance is made a Napoleon, the charge is signaled
(02:30):
by a lone bugler, Heinrich Steinwig. According to this tale,
he has awarded a bronze medal for bugling in the
face of the enemy. When not heading off to battle,
he is in the barracks, making mandolins and other instruments,
and occasionally striking up a tune with the military band.
(02:53):
After six years of military service, Steinwig begins an apprenticeship
with his church's organ builder. He is also introduced to
the piano through his Jewish friend, Carl Brand. Steinwig learns
to build a piano by copying brands. As he changes
the pipes of church organs, he becomes interested in notes,
(03:15):
octaves and chords. Thirsting for knowledge, He appears every Friday
evening at his church to listen to the organist rehearse
for Sunday services. Every German craftsman in eighteen thirty five
has to belong to a guild or what we would
call a union. Since Steinwick doesn't have a master craftsman
(03:37):
diploma as an instrument maker, he's not allowed to build
pianos officially, so he becomes a cabinet maker. But he's
still very much interested in building instruments. Here's master piano
builder Chris Mona.
Speaker 3 (03:52):
He has restored I think many instruments you have seen them,
he have compared them, and he has made his own
own concept, his own piano at that time for him,
who was better than the instruments he has seen? Around ten.
Speaker 2 (04:08):
Apart from being skilled and working with wood and special tools,
building a keyboard instrument requires musicality and a complex knowledge
of mathematics and physics, but Steinwig relies on intelligence and intuition.
The cabinet maker decides to start building forte pianos in
courts a woman He falls madly in love with, Juliana Tima,
(04:32):
the daughter of a well established glove maker. For the wedding,
Steinwig wants to impress Juliana with a very unusual.
Speaker 4 (04:40):
Gift sounds wonderful.
Speaker 2 (04:42):
In eighteen thirty five, he gives his bride his first
square piano that he designs himself. Here's Heinrich Steinwig's great
great grandson, Miles Chapin.
Speaker 4 (04:55):
That is consistent a little bit with this image of
a businessman. I mean, if if your first product is
very complex and technically complicated, you don't want to sell
it because it might break, in which case your reputation
is ruined before it's even been made. So for him
to take his first piano and give it to his wife,
I think that's wonderful. Here, you play this, honey and
(05:15):
tell me if it works.
Speaker 2 (05:17):
Newly wed and raring to go, Heinrich Steinwig wants to
build not only a good pianos, but the best pianos
in the world, with meticulousness and passion, He begins building
his first grand piano in eighteen thirty six, which he
later sells to the Duke of Brunswick for three thousand marks.
(05:38):
This piano is later named the Kitchen Piano and is
now on display at the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art,
along with the square piano he gave to his wife.
Speaker 4 (05:50):
I believe he started out as a cabinet maker. But
if you think about it from a businessman's point of view,
with the amount of labor and the amount of time
it takes to make one thing that's this big. Okay,
if this thing is a chest of drawers, you could
sell it for X. But if this thing that you're
making is a piano and takes longer to make, you
(06:10):
can sell it for five times X, six, ten times X,
so that his product could be more valuable to him
and his profit margins would be greater. I don't think
he was driven musically at all. I don't think he
was driven creatively at all. I think he was purely
My take is purely a businessman, and he had a
product that was a higher value product and he would
get a higher profit from it. Easier to transport, easier
(06:33):
to build at home, he could have one at a
time going and that was why he went into it.
Speaker 1 (06:39):
And what a story you're hearing about the Steinwig family,
which would of course become the Steinway family. And Miles Chappin,
what a point he made about the reason and what
drove Steinway to make pianos. And it wasn't art, it
was commerce. It was profit. And so often we share
the story of how free enterprise serves the public. And
(07:01):
without that profit motive we may not have had the
Steinway expertise and the brilliance of these pianos. He was
driven to not be a cabinet maker and to make
more profit with everything he did, and of course in
came the excellence and the mastery and everything else. When
we come back, more of this remarkable story, the story
(07:21):
of the Steinway family and the Steinway piano. Here on
Our American Stories, Leehabib here the host of our American Stories.
Every day on this show, we're bringing inspiring stories from
across this great country, stories from our big cities and
(07:42):
small towns. But we truly can't do the show without you.
Our stories are free to listen to, but they're not
free to make. If you love what you hear. Go
to Ouramerican Stories dot com and click the donate button.
Give a little, Give a lot. Go to Ouramerican Stories
dot com and give. And we continue here on our
(08:10):
American Stories with the life story of Henry Steinway. And
let's return to Greg Hengler and to where we last
left off.
Speaker 2 (08:21):
Heinrich Steinwig's first grand piano is an enormous success. To
meet the growing demand, Steinwigg decides to train his young boys.
Even his five year old has to help out in
the workshop. His musically talented daughter Doretta is only allowed
to watch. The crafts are strictly for men. With the
(08:43):
help of his sons, Steinwig can make ten to twelve
instruments a year. Then, in eighteen forty eight, riots in
golf most of Europe because of political instability and economic uncertainty,
spawning movements towards Socialism's second son, Charles, is on the
front lines in the fight for the people's sovereignty against
(09:05):
an absolutist prince and the civil liberties for the Christian
middle class. The socialist revolution fails to produce a redistribution
of wealth, land, or power, but it does paralyze businesses
throughout Europe, thereby encouraging businessmen like Heinrich Steinwig to consider
(09:25):
leaving fear in reprisals for their son. Charles leaves Germany
and sales to New York City in eighteen forty nine,
where he used to find a safe haven for both
himself and for the Steinwig piano business. In June eighteen
forty nine, Charles lands in New York, the heart of
(09:46):
professional music making in America and of America's piano industry.
The other major piano manufacturing cities are Boston, Baltimore, and Philadelphia,
all centers for German immigrants. Pianos have only been in
America since the Revolution, most of them brought in from
shipwrecks by pirates as part of their booty. The rest
(10:09):
were imported by John Jacob Astor, the German millionaire fur
trader who occasionally bartered furs for pianos. Six weeks after
his arrival, Charles writes to his family for the first time,
praising the quote progressive spirit of America unquote beloved parents, brothers,
and sisters. New York seems to be an el Dorado
(10:32):
for keyboard instruments. I soon found employment with a piano manufacturer.
It's a pretty well paying job. The growth of wealth
in the United States promises great opportunities for piano manufacturers.
You'll hardly believe it, but in nearly every household there's
a piano. Family. Music is part of daily life. Here,
(10:53):
be courageous and do not hesitate for too long. Frustrate
by an assortment of government regulation, interference and unjust taxes,
tens of thousands of Germans leave their homeland and flee
to America. Here again is Heinrich Steinwig's great great grandson,
(11:13):
Miles Chapin.
Speaker 4 (11:15):
It was a time of great political upheaval in Germany,
in Europe, all through Europe. It was not a climate
conducive to business. And the Steinweys, if anything, were businessmen,
and Heinrich, if anything, was a businessman. And he lived
in this small town in the Hearts Mountain region, Zaisen,
and he made his pianos one by one at home.
(11:37):
But to sell them he had to take them places,
and to take them places he had to cross borders.
And when he crossed borders there were tariffs. They were
added costs that weren't going into his pocket. And he
was ambitious. I think he just decided rationally to leave
Germany to set up a shop in New York City.
Speaker 2 (12:00):
Twenty eighth, eighteen fifty, the Steinwiggs, along with their three
daughters and three sons, bored the first German ocean liner
in Hamburg on her maiden voyage. The Steinwiggs reach New
York City in just thirty days. Their eldest son, Theodore,
stays in Germany to run the rest of the company.
(12:21):
When the Steinwiggs arrive, they face no restrictions, no questions,
no Ellis Island, and no statue of liberty. They quickly
move into a small rented apartment on Hester Street, in
the middle of a quarter that's known as Little Germany.
The Steinwigg's apartment is certainly very different from their spacious
home back in Germany. With more than six hundred thousand
(12:44):
German immigrants, New York is a German enclave. By eighteen
sixty one out of every four New Yorkers is German born.
Only Berlin and Vienna have more German citizens. These Germans
brought with them a classical music culture that didn't exist
in America. Here's Kathleen Haltzer from the New York Historical
(13:06):
Society speaking to us on Saint Mark's Place, just between
Second and Third Avenues.
Speaker 5 (13:13):
On this street, you could see how busy and productive
Germans were when they got to America.
Speaker 6 (13:19):
There would be.
Speaker 5 (13:20):
Pretzel sellers along this street, people selling cabbage, women selling clothes, and.
Speaker 6 (13:27):
The Germans were really good at founding their own groups.
Speaker 5 (13:30):
They liked to get together and do things together, so
they had tournferiin a club for men. They had their
beer gardens where the whole family would go, and they
had things like a gun club, which you can see
right on this street. It's still here. The gun club,
the schutzen Gazette Schafft is something that was not just
(13:51):
about shooting targets. It was also about men enjoying each
other's company and drinking beer.
Speaker 2 (13:58):
The Steinwigs don't go into business right away. Instead, they
decide to work for others until they get their feet
on the ground and learn some English and New York methods.
Heinrich and his sons select the best New York piano
makers to work for so they can learn the latest
and finest techniques. But three years after their arrival, an
(14:20):
economic depression hits New York. Heinrich's sons are unemployed and
he's earning a very low days pay as an employed
piano maker. In these times of instability, Heinrich quits his
job and opens his own piano workshop with his sons.
They no longer have very much to lose, but with
(14:41):
this move they now have the potential to achieve a
lot to help with sales. Business friends advise the Steinwiggs
to americanize their name, and so Heinrich Steinwig becomes Henry Steinway.
A humble attic on Verick Street, just below Canal Street
(15:02):
on the west side of Manhattan, becomes their very first
company headquarters. On March fifth, eighteen fifty three. With only
a verbal contract and a capital investment of just six
thousand dollars, Steinway and Sons is founded. It is a
good time to be in the piano business. Musical life
(15:24):
in America is flourishing, and that piano is at the
center of the increasing interest in music. Most piano pupils
are women, other instruments being seen as detracting from feminine attractiveness.
The cello demands that a woman spread her legs, and
the harp ruins her posture, but at the piano she
(15:46):
can sit demurely with her feet together. Even courtship increasingly
takes place at the keyboard.
Speaker 4 (15:53):
From the beginning, the women were there to support the men,
assist the men, the food for clean up after the men.
But it was a man's business. Doretta one of the
daughters of the original Steinway's She gave piano lessons, but
I don't think she ever worked for the company. I
don't think she was ever a salaried employee of Steinway
(16:16):
and Sons. She probably owned a few shares in the
company herself, but she didn't work there. Now, my mother
was the Steinway in the family, and she had four
older brothers who she watched, one by one go off
and work at the family business. So naturally, when she
came of age, she asked her father, when do I
start in the family business, And the story goes that
(16:40):
he brought her to the piano and said, come here,
open the piano, read me what it says in the
piano Steinway and Sons. Please don't embarrass me. There's no
women at Steinway and Sons. Even my secretary is a man.
Closed the live of the piano. Forget it.
Speaker 2 (17:00):
Here's Andy Horbachevsky, vice president of Steinley and Sons. New York.
Speaker 7 (17:05):
What was amazing to me is that in the ten
years from eighteen fifty three to eighteen sixty when they
started the factory, the very big factory on Park Avenue here,
they went from scratch to building the most grand pianos
of any other piano manufacturers. And I think that's a
credit to not only the excellent design and craftsmanship, but
(17:28):
they were tremendous I think businessmen and marketers and salesmen.
Speaker 1 (17:33):
And what a story this is, the stein Wiggs becoming
the stein Ways. It's a classic immigrants story. There were
no restrictions here in America, there were no questions. Henry Steinway.
The family story continues here on our American stories. And
(18:09):
we continue here with our American stories, and with the
story of Henry Steinway. Let's return to Greg Hengler and
pick up where we left off.
Speaker 2 (18:20):
Each Steinway and Son's grand piano is handcrafted and comprises
twelve thousand individual parts, assembled by as many as four
hundred and fifty people. The process takes over a year
to complete. Although it's always the same construction plans and materials,
no two pianos ever sound alike. Steinway grand pianos all
(18:42):
have their own individual sound and personality. Here's Lang Lang,
who is considered by many to be one of the
finest concert pianists of all time. Lang compares the best
pianos to great actors for their ability to convey extremes
of emotion and attitude. It was the flamboyant pianism in
(19:03):
a Tom and Jerry cartoon, he says that originally drew
him to the instrument.
Speaker 8 (19:13):
I had a great privilege to go to both Stamley
factories in New York and in Hamburg.
Speaker 4 (19:21):
And it's a big monster.
Speaker 8 (19:24):
I mean, it's huge. But when they started working, almost
like you found that they're working on a Swiss watch.
Speaker 9 (19:31):
Is so detailed, everything so.
Speaker 8 (19:33):
Precise, like they're making amolin or making some smaller item,
not like you know, you wouldn't imagine when you go
to the factory, that's the factory of a producing a piano,
such a big monster, you know, And and that precise
work really transferred and to the sound.
Speaker 2 (19:56):
There is a unique person in Steinways's factory, the one
who may the final tuning for all pianos before delivery.
With an expert touch, he can quickly discern the questionable
keys and makes chalk marks then he patiently adjusts the
hammers to achieve the perfect string strokes. Because of his
(20:16):
acute gift, he is known as Steinway's ear. Walter Boot
is the heart and soul of Steinway and sons, and
has been working in the piano factory in New York
for over fifty years. Not a single Steinway piano leaves
the building until it satisfies his absolute Here here's Walter Boot,
(20:38):
Andy Horbachevsky and Miles Chappin.
Speaker 10 (20:43):
My job is to even out the tone.
Speaker 6 (20:45):
I get the piano.
Speaker 10 (20:46):
The piano is all done, ready to go to somebody's house,
and I like fine tune it. I listen to it,
I play it, I make it all the town even
so I'm happy with it. When I'm happy with it,
I know you're going to be happy with it. I
love working with Tianwaight time Wait gave my whole life.
(21:07):
I'm the old working person in the factory right now.
They call me Uncle Wally. If he thought I worked
you so long. When the piano come here, it looked
like a piano. When it leaves, it sounds like a piano.
Do I put the love into the piano? Mozart Rock
(21:37):
Modern Off.
Speaker 7 (21:50):
We go through multiple tunings, multiple regulations, multiple voicings, so
it is a really a circle of refinement, constantly trying
to get that last ounce of tone out of it.
Speaker 6 (22:04):
We will baby that hammer, we will pull out as
much as we can.
Speaker 4 (22:09):
In the early days, Henry Jr. Was the mastermind. Cf
Theodore Steinway was back in Germany and he was still
making pianos, and he was working on his pianos, and
there's a correspondence back and forth between Brunswick and New York,
and they were trying out different ideas, but Henry Junior
was really the one here who was getting the patents
(22:30):
and really making the advances. From an engineering perspective, if
there was any single patent that made the most difference,
it would be the overstrung one piece cast iron frame.
That's what differentiated the Steinway piano in its day. It
was the first piano company to bring a grand piano
(22:51):
with a one piece cast iron frame to market successfully.
They first showed it in eighteen sixty seven in Paris,
and pretty much you can measure the history of the
piano from the time running up to that point and
the time running away from that point, because today you
can't buy a piano that doesn't have a one piece
cast iron over a strong frame. But before that time
(23:15):
there were none, and they were the first, and they
had a patent on it.
Speaker 2 (23:19):
Together with his sons, Henry Steinway's credo is the same
as ever, to build the best pianos in the world.
Speaker 4 (23:26):
You see pictures of him, and there's only a couple
of them, and he was ramrod straight, and his fists
jammed into his pocket and his set of his jaw
just like this. He was very determined, determined to make
a successful company, to make a success of his life
in the United States, to give his children a better
life than he had. I think it's that classic American story.
Speaker 2 (23:45):
The Steinway's future depends first on skill, then on national
recognition to boost sales. The company founder has an ingenious ideal.
He realizes that the renowned pianists and composers of the
time are the ideal advertisers for Steinley and sons, So
he signs the acclaimed artists exclusively to Steinway.
Speaker 7 (24:09):
They are not bashful, they are not afraid to tell
us if something is not one hundred percent with the
piano itself. I think we are very lucky to have
this very good feedback information coming back to us from
this very valuable part of our customer base, the concert artists.
Speaker 2 (24:27):
Here's Steinway historian Cornelia Puhlman.
Speaker 11 (24:32):
People said that if people like that play on them,
then this instrument must be of high quality. They asked
for recommendations from the aristocracy, such as the Queen of Spain,
the Sultan of Turkey, the King of Sweden, and use
these recommendations for advertising purposes too. They then built the
Steinway Hall. Here in the Steinway Hall is where concerts
(24:57):
took place. When you wanted to go to the concert hall,
you had to walk through the exhibition rooms. And so
naturally they did even more advertising for the pianos.
Speaker 4 (25:09):
With that.
Speaker 3 (25:11):
Gomart.
Speaker 2 (25:13):
The New York Times wrote at the time that Steinways
can be proud that they own the most magnificent piano
business in the whole world. Today, over ninety five percent
of the world's finest pianists prefers Steinway pianos for their concerts.
At sixty seven, Henry Steinway has fulfilled all his dreams reputation,
(25:36):
wealth and fame, But then tragedy strikes. On March eleventh,
eighteen sixty five, Henry Junior dies of consumption at the
age of just thirty five. Then just days later, Henry's
other son, Charles, dies of typhoid fever while visiting his
(25:57):
brother in Germany.
Speaker 4 (25:59):
Must have been devastad to Henry Steinway. I mean to
lose not only one son, but two sons. I mean,
of course, that was an era where people died more easily.
You didn't live as long, and children died. But it
was very, very difficult for him, especially, you know, being
an immigrant, I mean, his whole family he brought with him.
(26:19):
They were here, and when it's diminished by two, well
he did have the one son back in Germany. But
when it's diminished the number that are in New York
by two, that was when they wanted to bring CF.
Theodore over to strengthen the family.
Speaker 2 (26:32):
It is William's job now to keep the family business running.
He writes to his brother Theodore in Germany that they
desperately need him in New York. Theodore leaves his successful
business in Germany, and three weeks later he arrives in
New York. Brothers William and Theodore form the perfect company management.
(26:52):
Theodore invents groundbreaking features for grand piano mechanisms, and William
knows how to sell them. Success starts spirally.
Speaker 1 (27:03):
And what a story. And it's so hard to comprehend
losing two sons in such a short period of time,
especially with a family business, one with real specific knowledge
and drive. When we come back, we'll continue with the
story of Henry Steinway, and we return to the final
(27:39):
installment of this remarkable life story, this quintessential American story.
And we heard in the beginning fleeing Germany because of
so many restrictions and coming to America to just do well,
do what the Steinways do, make a great product. And
now Greg Hengler with the final part of the story
(28:00):
of Henry Steinway.
Speaker 2 (28:02):
Here again is Henry Steinway's great great grandson, Miles Chapin.
Speaker 4 (28:07):
The skill set, the way that the talents of the
suns meshed is really what made the difference, because on
the one hand, you had cf. Theodore Steinway engineering the
piano differently, but then on the other hand you had
his brother William Steinway, who was changing the way you
sold pianos, changing the marketing of pianos. And so when
(28:28):
you had a company that had a demonstrably finer product
coupled with a CEO, a corporate officer who knew how
to sell that product and was innovative in the ways
he was selling that product. Boom, it came together and
it just made a sum greater than the sum of
the parts.
Speaker 2 (28:50):
Then in eighteen sixty three, those parts were attacked by
the Manhattan Workers' Union strikes, disrupting Steinway piano production.
Speaker 4 (29:00):
When the Furniture Makers Union decided to target the piano industry,
Steinway was the biggest, had the most prominent name, and
they decided to target Steinway and Sons. At that time,
he had a country house out here in Bowery Bay
in Queens, and I think he had a revelation one
day he said, wait a minute, New York's over there.
(29:21):
I have a house here. Here's all this land, the water,
the ocean is right there. I can bring my war
materials in here. I can move my factory here. And
I think he deliberately set about doing that, buying the
acreage out here, moving the company out piece by piece,
digging the tunnel underneath the East River. You know, the
Steinway tunnel was the first tunnel under the East River.
(29:43):
I took it this morning. When I took the subway
into Manhattan. The number seven train goes through the WILLIAMS.
Steinway Tunnel to.
Speaker 2 (29:49):
Get the workers out of the social unrest and union
riots in Manhattan. Steinway has his Steinway Village built in
a story of queens.
Speaker 4 (30:00):
And he built gymnasiums, libraries, churches, housing for his workers,
and a lot of it is still there. You can
see on the streets. You know, the streets have been renamed,
you know, thirtieth Avenue, thirty first Street, but you can
go to some of the housing that was the factory
housing and you can see chiseled on stone on the
side of the building Albert strassa Friedrich Strass, and that
(30:20):
was the names that William Steinway had for his original city.
Speaker 2 (30:23):
Then in eighteen eighty, Theodore returns to Germany in order
to open and operate a second factory in Hamburg. Since then,
they've split the global market into two parts. Here again
is Andy Horbachevsky, vice president of Steinley and Sons New York.
Speaker 7 (30:42):
We're one company, but we do manufacture in two plants
here in New York in one in Hamburg, Germany. And
there are subtle differences, certainly a little in terms of
just the finish and the high gloss versus the satin look.
But there are also some tonal differences. From our perspective
as a global company, we like the choice. There are
(31:05):
artists that prefer the New York instrument in Europe and
vice versa that in North America here some prefer the
Hamburg to us.
Speaker 6 (31:15):
We think that offering a choice is good and we
will not change that in the future.
Speaker 2 (31:22):
When the United States enters into World War two, Steinland
sons are no longer able to build pianos.
Speaker 4 (31:30):
Pianos were not deemed strategic materials during World War Two
in the United States. However, some of the things that
go into making the piano were deemed strategic materials. Copper,
for instance, all the copper in the United States was
going into the war efforts, so the piano makers were
not allowed to use copper. The wood that they had
at the factory, some of it was used for rifle stocks,
(31:53):
things like that. The government at one point was suggested
that Steinway make coffins. I think my grandfather, who had
four sons in the war, decided he didn't want to
make coffins. They did make glider airplanes for the war effort,
they did make about two thousand pianos for the war effort.
Small olive, drab government issue piano, the odgipiano, which I love,
(32:14):
came a little packing crate, had some music, a set
of tuning tools. They shipped them all over the world.
Speaker 2 (32:21):
The one hundred and fifty year old company produces about
two thousand handmade nine foot concert grand pianos a year,
compared with the approximately one hundred a day by other companies.
These magnificent instruments do not come cheap. One is shown
(32:42):
in the Steinway showroom in New York on West fifty
seventh Street, with a price tag of one hundred and
three thousand dollars. No wonder a prospective buyer is very
particular in choosing a specific piano. Each handmade instrument has
its own personality. The limited production hinges a lot on
the brand severe selection standards for timber. After all, eighty
(33:07):
five percent of the Steinway piano is made from wood.
Precious timbers from all over the world are neatly stacked
in Steinway's warehouses, and there they spend two years in
their natural drying process before the next step. Space between
them ensures good air circulation and the pliability of wood
(33:27):
after the drying process. Only fifty to sixty percent pass
the rigorous quality checks to become piano parts. As the
soundboard is the central part of a piano, the design
and the selection of the materials for it must be meticulous.
The artisans select the finest North American spruce spruce has
(33:48):
the desired regular grain to ensure a smooth resonance. Only
five to ten percent of the timber from one tree
can be used for the handmade soundboard by the experienced cars.
Australian concert pianist Piers Lane has specially flown to Hamburg
to choose three concert grands for his hometown Sydney.
Speaker 9 (34:11):
Which works as well. There's a singing sound with quality. Now,
it'd be interesting to compare that with the one down
the ends.
Speaker 2 (34:18):
Peers is attended to buy Steinway and Sun sales consultant
Garrett Glanner, who jots down notes while following Peers around
a brightly lit showroom filled with Steinway Grand pianos, that
we start with.
Speaker 9 (34:32):
The same thing. I don't feel it's got the same
fineness of quality as the other one in the tone,
(34:55):
but let's truy some mozart I don't feel it's got
the same depth of character as the other one. The
other one's got more core to the sound. I want
(35:16):
to compare that now with the first one.
Speaker 2 (35:18):
After a sound test marathon of six and a half hours,
the pianist makes his selections.
Speaker 9 (35:25):
It's interesting because it makes me play it in a
slightly different way. This piano.
Speaker 4 (35:28):
How do you feel the middle one is a kind
of a mixed topic.
Speaker 5 (35:32):
Boh, it's true.
Speaker 12 (35:34):
But if I should use the term no bliss, yes,
I would find it most in this way because there's
some extra I agree glimpse on you to know it,
and I think it has the beautiful kentigily.
Speaker 9 (35:47):
I like the balance of the piano exactly. It feels,
you know, even across the whole range. But at the
same time it has the classical transparency as well in
the texture.
Speaker 4 (36:07):
Periodically, there has been in the history of the piano.
The death bell has been summoned or been struck. You
know what happened in the nineteen twenties when player pianos
started and when radio came on, people said, oh, well,
nobody will listen to pianos anymore. After World War Two,
with Hi fi and television people said, oh, people won't
have pianos anymore in the fifties with electric pianos and
(36:31):
Hammond organs. No, people will never need pianos anymore. Didn't
happen then, hasn't happened now, you know. And still people
are improving, tinkering, as you say, a little bit with
the piano, just trying to find small improvements to it.
But there's nothing that can replace it. Nothing can replace
the sound of a grand piano well played.
Speaker 2 (37:06):
After seventy five years, in eighteen seventy one, an unusual
life journey comes to an end, a journey that took
the orphan from the Hearts Mountains in Germany to the
highest highs of music in America. Courage, perseverance, and family
were his strengths. After one hundred and fifty plus years
(37:29):
of turmoil, feuds, depressions, wars, competition from the far East,
nothing has silenced the Steinway sound, even if what Steinway
is now selling is its past rather than any technical innovation.
A New York Times reporter referred to the Steinway factory
as a resilient treasure in a city that wonders whether
(37:53):
it has lost its soul. With his Steinway and sons.
Piano Henry Steinway has made himself immortal. I'm Greg Hengler
and this is our American Stories
Speaker 1 (38:08):
And great job as always Greg, Henry Steinway, his story
here on our American Stories
This is Lee Habib, and this is our American stories.
And our next story is about a brand name we
all know, Steinway, but a man you don't know, Henry Steinway.
In the end, the story we're about to hear is
a story about resiliency and a man search for freedom.
Here's Greg Hangler.
Speaker 2 (00:36):
As guests dyne on succulent roasted fowl and mouth watering
marinated oysters, washing their palettes with ice cold champagne. Piano
music is in the air. The occasion is the opening
of the new Steinway factory in New York. On April first,
eighteen sixty A correspondent from a local newspaper declares, it
(01:01):
is conceded that the Steinway piano in make tone, sweetness,
precision and durability, is the most perfect instrument of that
class to be had anywhere in the world. The road
to victory began sixty three years earlier in Wolfshagen, a
(01:22):
small forest hamlet nestled in the slopes of the Upper
Hearts Mountains in northwest Germany, where Heinrich Steinwig, founder of
Steinway and Sons, is born. Church records reveal that the
Steinwigs were master charcoal burners. They lived in the woods, and,
like most charcoal burners, were regarded with deep suspicion by
(01:44):
townspeople who rarely saw them. Steinwig's childhood is marked by
many tragedies and twists of fate. At the age of eight,
during a harsh winter, his mother and most of his
siblings die from exposure. He is orphaned until his father
than brothers, once thought to have been killed in action,
returned from the Napoleonic Wars in Klining. Then at fifteen
(02:08):
he is orphaned once again. Penniless and living on the streets,
he seeks refuge in the German army. Two years later,
he's fighting against Napoleon at the Battle of Waterloo on
June eighteenth, eighteen fifteen. Family legend has it that when
an advance is made a Napoleon, the charge is signaled
(02:30):
by a lone bugler, Heinrich Steinwig. According to this tale,
he has awarded a bronze medal for bugling in the
face of the enemy. When not heading off to battle,
he is in the barracks, making mandolins and other instruments,
and occasionally striking up a tune with the military band.
(02:53):
After six years of military service, Steinwig begins an apprenticeship
with his church's organ builder. He is also introduced to
the piano through his Jewish friend, Carl Brand. Steinwig learns
to build a piano by copying brands. As he changes
the pipes of church organs, he becomes interested in notes,
(03:15):
octaves and chords. Thirsting for knowledge, He appears every Friday
evening at his church to listen to the organist rehearse
for Sunday services. Every German craftsman in eighteen thirty five
has to belong to a guild or what we would
call a union. Since Steinwick doesn't have a master craftsman
(03:37):
diploma as an instrument maker, he's not allowed to build
pianos officially, so he becomes a cabinet maker. But he's
still very much interested in building instruments. Here's master piano
builder Chris Mona.
Speaker 3 (03:52):
He has restored I think many instruments you have seen them,
he have compared them, and he has made his own
own concept, his own piano at that time for him,
who was better than the instruments he has seen? Around ten.
Speaker 2 (04:08):
Apart from being skilled and working with wood and special tools,
building a keyboard instrument requires musicality and a complex knowledge
of mathematics and physics, but Steinwig relies on intelligence and intuition.
The cabinet maker decides to start building forte pianos in
courts a woman He falls madly in love with, Juliana Tima,
(04:32):
the daughter of a well established glove maker. For the wedding,
Steinwig wants to impress Juliana with a very unusual.
Speaker 4 (04:40):
Gift sounds wonderful.
Speaker 2 (04:42):
In eighteen thirty five, he gives his bride his first
square piano that he designs himself. Here's Heinrich Steinwig's great
great grandson, Miles Chapin.
Speaker 4 (04:55):
That is consistent a little bit with this image of
a businessman. I mean, if if your first product is
very complex and technically complicated, you don't want to sell
it because it might break, in which case your reputation
is ruined before it's even been made. So for him
to take his first piano and give it to his wife,
I think that's wonderful. Here, you play this, honey and
(05:15):
tell me if it works.
Speaker 2 (05:17):
Newly wed and raring to go, Heinrich Steinwig wants to
build not only a good pianos, but the best pianos
in the world, with meticulousness and passion, He begins building
his first grand piano in eighteen thirty six, which he
later sells to the Duke of Brunswick for three thousand marks.
(05:38):
This piano is later named the Kitchen Piano and is
now on display at the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art,
along with the square piano he gave to his wife.
Speaker 4 (05:50):
I believe he started out as a cabinet maker. But
if you think about it from a businessman's point of view,
with the amount of labor and the amount of time
it takes to make one thing that's this big. Okay,
if this thing is a chest of drawers, you could
sell it for X. But if this thing that you're
making is a piano and takes longer to make, you
(06:10):
can sell it for five times X, six, ten times X,
so that his product could be more valuable to him
and his profit margins would be greater. I don't think
he was driven musically at all. I don't think he
was driven creatively at all. I think he was purely
My take is purely a businessman, and he had a
product that was a higher value product and he would
get a higher profit from it. Easier to transport, easier
(06:33):
to build at home, he could have one at a
time going and that was why he went into it.
Speaker 1 (06:39):
And what a story you're hearing about the Steinwig family,
which would of course become the Steinway family. And Miles Chappin,
what a point he made about the reason and what
drove Steinway to make pianos. And it wasn't art, it
was commerce. It was profit. And so often we share
the story of how free enterprise serves the public. And
(07:01):
without that profit motive we may not have had the
Steinway expertise and the brilliance of these pianos. He was
driven to not be a cabinet maker and to make
more profit with everything he did, and of course in
came the excellence and the mastery and everything else. When
we come back, more of this remarkable story, the story
(07:21):
of the Steinway family and the Steinway piano. Here on
Our American Stories, Leehabib here the host of our American Stories.
Every day on this show, we're bringing inspiring stories from
across this great country, stories from our big cities and
(07:42):
small towns. But we truly can't do the show without you.
Our stories are free to listen to, but they're not
free to make. If you love what you hear. Go
to Ouramerican Stories dot com and click the donate button.
Give a little, Give a lot. Go to Ouramerican Stories
dot com and give. And we continue here on our
(08:10):
American Stories with the life story of Henry Steinway. And
let's return to Greg Hengler and to where we last
left off.
Speaker 2 (08:21):
Heinrich Steinwig's first grand piano is an enormous success. To
meet the growing demand, Steinwigg decides to train his young boys.
Even his five year old has to help out in
the workshop. His musically talented daughter Doretta is only allowed
to watch. The crafts are strictly for men. With the
(08:43):
help of his sons, Steinwig can make ten to twelve
instruments a year. Then, in eighteen forty eight, riots in
golf most of Europe because of political instability and economic uncertainty,
spawning movements towards Socialism's second son, Charles, is on the
front lines in the fight for the people's sovereignty against
(09:05):
an absolutist prince and the civil liberties for the Christian
middle class. The socialist revolution fails to produce a redistribution
of wealth, land, or power, but it does paralyze businesses
throughout Europe, thereby encouraging businessmen like Heinrich Steinwig to consider
(09:25):
leaving fear in reprisals for their son. Charles leaves Germany
and sales to New York City in eighteen forty nine,
where he used to find a safe haven for both
himself and for the Steinwig piano business. In June eighteen
forty nine, Charles lands in New York, the heart of
(09:46):
professional music making in America and of America's piano industry.
The other major piano manufacturing cities are Boston, Baltimore, and Philadelphia,
all centers for German immigrants. Pianos have only been in
America since the Revolution, most of them brought in from
shipwrecks by pirates as part of their booty. The rest
(10:09):
were imported by John Jacob Astor, the German millionaire fur
trader who occasionally bartered furs for pianos. Six weeks after
his arrival, Charles writes to his family for the first time,
praising the quote progressive spirit of America unquote beloved parents, brothers,
and sisters. New York seems to be an el Dorado
(10:32):
for keyboard instruments. I soon found employment with a piano manufacturer.
It's a pretty well paying job. The growth of wealth
in the United States promises great opportunities for piano manufacturers.
You'll hardly believe it, but in nearly every household there's
a piano. Family. Music is part of daily life. Here,
(10:53):
be courageous and do not hesitate for too long. Frustrate
by an assortment of government regulation, interference and unjust taxes,
tens of thousands of Germans leave their homeland and flee
to America. Here again is Heinrich Steinwig's great great grandson,
(11:13):
Miles Chapin.
Speaker 4 (11:15):
It was a time of great political upheaval in Germany,
in Europe, all through Europe. It was not a climate
conducive to business. And the Steinweys, if anything, were businessmen,
and Heinrich, if anything, was a businessman. And he lived
in this small town in the Hearts Mountain region, Zaisen,
and he made his pianos one by one at home.
(11:37):
But to sell them he had to take them places,
and to take them places he had to cross borders.
And when he crossed borders there were tariffs. They were
added costs that weren't going into his pocket. And he
was ambitious. I think he just decided rationally to leave
Germany to set up a shop in New York City.
Speaker 2 (12:00):
Twenty eighth, eighteen fifty, the Steinwiggs, along with their three
daughters and three sons, bored the first German ocean liner
in Hamburg on her maiden voyage. The Steinwiggs reach New
York City in just thirty days. Their eldest son, Theodore,
stays in Germany to run the rest of the company.
(12:21):
When the Steinwiggs arrive, they face no restrictions, no questions,
no Ellis Island, and no statue of liberty. They quickly
move into a small rented apartment on Hester Street, in
the middle of a quarter that's known as Little Germany.
The Steinwigg's apartment is certainly very different from their spacious
home back in Germany. With more than six hundred thousand
(12:44):
German immigrants, New York is a German enclave. By eighteen
sixty one out of every four New Yorkers is German born.
Only Berlin and Vienna have more German citizens. These Germans
brought with them a classical music culture that didn't exist
in America. Here's Kathleen Haltzer from the New York Historical
(13:06):
Society speaking to us on Saint Mark's Place, just between
Second and Third Avenues.
Speaker 5 (13:13):
On this street, you could see how busy and productive
Germans were when they got to America.
Speaker 6 (13:19):
There would be.
Speaker 5 (13:20):
Pretzel sellers along this street, people selling cabbage, women selling clothes, and.
Speaker 6 (13:27):
The Germans were really good at founding their own groups.
Speaker 5 (13:30):
They liked to get together and do things together, so
they had tournferiin a club for men. They had their
beer gardens where the whole family would go, and they
had things like a gun club, which you can see
right on this street. It's still here. The gun club,
the schutzen Gazette Schafft is something that was not just
(13:51):
about shooting targets. It was also about men enjoying each
other's company and drinking beer.
Speaker 2 (13:58):
The Steinwigs don't go into business right away. Instead, they
decide to work for others until they get their feet
on the ground and learn some English and New York methods.
Heinrich and his sons select the best New York piano
makers to work for so they can learn the latest
and finest techniques. But three years after their arrival, an
(14:20):
economic depression hits New York. Heinrich's sons are unemployed and
he's earning a very low days pay as an employed
piano maker. In these times of instability, Heinrich quits his
job and opens his own piano workshop with his sons.
They no longer have very much to lose, but with
(14:41):
this move they now have the potential to achieve a
lot to help with sales. Business friends advise the Steinwiggs
to americanize their name, and so Heinrich Steinwig becomes Henry Steinway.
A humble attic on Verick Street, just below Canal Street
(15:02):
on the west side of Manhattan, becomes their very first
company headquarters. On March fifth, eighteen fifty three. With only
a verbal contract and a capital investment of just six
thousand dollars, Steinway and Sons is founded. It is a
good time to be in the piano business. Musical life
(15:24):
in America is flourishing, and that piano is at the
center of the increasing interest in music. Most piano pupils
are women, other instruments being seen as detracting from feminine attractiveness.
The cello demands that a woman spread her legs, and
the harp ruins her posture, but at the piano she
(15:46):
can sit demurely with her feet together. Even courtship increasingly
takes place at the keyboard.
Speaker 4 (15:53):
From the beginning, the women were there to support the men,
assist the men, the food for clean up after the men.
But it was a man's business. Doretta one of the
daughters of the original Steinway's She gave piano lessons, but
I don't think she ever worked for the company. I
don't think she was ever a salaried employee of Steinway
(16:16):
and Sons. She probably owned a few shares in the
company herself, but she didn't work there. Now, my mother
was the Steinway in the family, and she had four
older brothers who she watched, one by one go off
and work at the family business. So naturally, when she
came of age, she asked her father, when do I
start in the family business, And the story goes that
(16:40):
he brought her to the piano and said, come here,
open the piano, read me what it says in the
piano Steinway and Sons. Please don't embarrass me. There's no
women at Steinway and Sons. Even my secretary is a man.
Closed the live of the piano. Forget it.
Speaker 2 (17:00):
Here's Andy Horbachevsky, vice president of Steinley and Sons. New York.
Speaker 7 (17:05):
What was amazing to me is that in the ten
years from eighteen fifty three to eighteen sixty when they
started the factory, the very big factory on Park Avenue here,
they went from scratch to building the most grand pianos
of any other piano manufacturers. And I think that's a
credit to not only the excellent design and craftsmanship, but
(17:28):
they were tremendous I think businessmen and marketers and salesmen.
Speaker 1 (17:33):
And what a story this is, the stein Wiggs becoming
the stein Ways. It's a classic immigrants story. There were
no restrictions here in America, there were no questions. Henry Steinway.
The family story continues here on our American stories. And
(18:09):
we continue here with our American stories, and with the
story of Henry Steinway. Let's return to Greg Hengler and
pick up where we left off.
Speaker 2 (18:20):
Each Steinway and Son's grand piano is handcrafted and comprises
twelve thousand individual parts, assembled by as many as four
hundred and fifty people. The process takes over a year
to complete. Although it's always the same construction plans and materials,
no two pianos ever sound alike. Steinway grand pianos all
(18:42):
have their own individual sound and personality. Here's Lang Lang,
who is considered by many to be one of the
finest concert pianists of all time. Lang compares the best
pianos to great actors for their ability to convey extremes
of emotion and attitude. It was the flamboyant pianism in
(19:03):
a Tom and Jerry cartoon, he says that originally drew
him to the instrument.
Speaker 8 (19:13):
I had a great privilege to go to both Stamley
factories in New York and in Hamburg.
Speaker 4 (19:21):
And it's a big monster.
Speaker 8 (19:24):
I mean, it's huge. But when they started working, almost
like you found that they're working on a Swiss watch.
Speaker 9 (19:31):
Is so detailed, everything so.
Speaker 8 (19:33):
Precise, like they're making amolin or making some smaller item,
not like you know, you wouldn't imagine when you go
to the factory, that's the factory of a producing a piano,
such a big monster, you know, And and that precise
work really transferred and to the sound.
Speaker 2 (19:56):
There is a unique person in Steinways's factory, the one
who may the final tuning for all pianos before delivery.
With an expert touch, he can quickly discern the questionable
keys and makes chalk marks then he patiently adjusts the
hammers to achieve the perfect string strokes. Because of his
(20:16):
acute gift, he is known as Steinway's ear. Walter Boot
is the heart and soul of Steinway and sons, and
has been working in the piano factory in New York
for over fifty years. Not a single Steinway piano leaves
the building until it satisfies his absolute Here here's Walter Boot,
(20:38):
Andy Horbachevsky and Miles Chappin.
Speaker 10 (20:43):
My job is to even out the tone.
Speaker 6 (20:45):
I get the piano.
Speaker 10 (20:46):
The piano is all done, ready to go to somebody's house,
and I like fine tune it. I listen to it,
I play it, I make it all the town even
so I'm happy with it. When I'm happy with it,
I know you're going to be happy with it. I
love working with Tianwaight time Wait gave my whole life.
(21:07):
I'm the old working person in the factory right now.
They call me Uncle Wally. If he thought I worked
you so long. When the piano come here, it looked
like a piano. When it leaves, it sounds like a piano.
Do I put the love into the piano? Mozart Rock
(21:37):
Modern Off.
Speaker 7 (21:50):
We go through multiple tunings, multiple regulations, multiple voicings, so
it is a really a circle of refinement, constantly trying
to get that last ounce of tone out of it.
Speaker 6 (22:04):
We will baby that hammer, we will pull out as
much as we can.
Speaker 4 (22:09):
In the early days, Henry Jr. Was the mastermind. Cf
Theodore Steinway was back in Germany and he was still
making pianos, and he was working on his pianos, and
there's a correspondence back and forth between Brunswick and New York,
and they were trying out different ideas, but Henry Junior
was really the one here who was getting the patents
(22:30):
and really making the advances. From an engineering perspective, if
there was any single patent that made the most difference,
it would be the overstrung one piece cast iron frame.
That's what differentiated the Steinway piano in its day. It
was the first piano company to bring a grand piano
(22:51):
with a one piece cast iron frame to market successfully.
They first showed it in eighteen sixty seven in Paris,
and pretty much you can measure the history of the
piano from the time running up to that point and
the time running away from that point, because today you
can't buy a piano that doesn't have a one piece
cast iron over a strong frame. But before that time
(23:15):
there were none, and they were the first, and they
had a patent on it.
Speaker 2 (23:19):
Together with his sons, Henry Steinway's credo is the same
as ever, to build the best pianos in the world.
Speaker 4 (23:26):
You see pictures of him, and there's only a couple
of them, and he was ramrod straight, and his fists
jammed into his pocket and his set of his jaw
just like this. He was very determined, determined to make
a successful company, to make a success of his life
in the United States, to give his children a better
life than he had. I think it's that classic American story.
Speaker 2 (23:45):
The Steinway's future depends first on skill, then on national
recognition to boost sales. The company founder has an ingenious ideal.
He realizes that the renowned pianists and composers of the
time are the ideal advertisers for Steinley and sons, So
he signs the acclaimed artists exclusively to Steinway.
Speaker 7 (24:09):
They are not bashful, they are not afraid to tell
us if something is not one hundred percent with the
piano itself. I think we are very lucky to have
this very good feedback information coming back to us from
this very valuable part of our customer base, the concert artists.
Speaker 2 (24:27):
Here's Steinway historian Cornelia Puhlman.
Speaker 11 (24:32):
People said that if people like that play on them,
then this instrument must be of high quality. They asked
for recommendations from the aristocracy, such as the Queen of Spain,
the Sultan of Turkey, the King of Sweden, and use
these recommendations for advertising purposes too. They then built the
Steinway Hall. Here in the Steinway Hall is where concerts
(24:57):
took place. When you wanted to go to the concert hall,
you had to walk through the exhibition rooms. And so
naturally they did even more advertising for the pianos.
Speaker 4 (25:09):
With that.
Speaker 3 (25:11):
Gomart.
Speaker 2 (25:13):
The New York Times wrote at the time that Steinways
can be proud that they own the most magnificent piano
business in the whole world. Today, over ninety five percent
of the world's finest pianists prefers Steinway pianos for their concerts.
At sixty seven, Henry Steinway has fulfilled all his dreams reputation,
(25:36):
wealth and fame, But then tragedy strikes. On March eleventh,
eighteen sixty five, Henry Junior dies of consumption at the
age of just thirty five. Then just days later, Henry's
other son, Charles, dies of typhoid fever while visiting his
(25:57):
brother in Germany.
Speaker 4 (25:59):
Must have been devastad to Henry Steinway. I mean to
lose not only one son, but two sons. I mean,
of course, that was an era where people died more easily.
You didn't live as long, and children died. But it
was very, very difficult for him, especially, you know, being
an immigrant, I mean, his whole family he brought with him.
(26:19):
They were here, and when it's diminished by two, well
he did have the one son back in Germany. But
when it's diminished the number that are in New York
by two, that was when they wanted to bring CF.
Theodore over to strengthen the family.
Speaker 2 (26:32):
It is William's job now to keep the family business running.
He writes to his brother Theodore in Germany that they
desperately need him in New York. Theodore leaves his successful
business in Germany, and three weeks later he arrives in
New York. Brothers William and Theodore form the perfect company management.
(26:52):
Theodore invents groundbreaking features for grand piano mechanisms, and William
knows how to sell them. Success starts spirally.
Speaker 1 (27:03):
And what a story. And it's so hard to comprehend
losing two sons in such a short period of time,
especially with a family business, one with real specific knowledge
and drive. When we come back, we'll continue with the
story of Henry Steinway, and we return to the final
(27:39):
installment of this remarkable life story, this quintessential American story.
And we heard in the beginning fleeing Germany because of
so many restrictions and coming to America to just do well,
do what the Steinways do, make a great product. And
now Greg Hengler with the final part of the story
(28:00):
of Henry Steinway.
Speaker 2 (28:02):
Here again is Henry Steinway's great great grandson, Miles Chapin.
Speaker 4 (28:07):
The skill set, the way that the talents of the
suns meshed is really what made the difference, because on
the one hand, you had cf. Theodore Steinway engineering the
piano differently, but then on the other hand you had
his brother William Steinway, who was changing the way you
sold pianos, changing the marketing of pianos. And so when
(28:28):
you had a company that had a demonstrably finer product
coupled with a CEO, a corporate officer who knew how
to sell that product and was innovative in the ways
he was selling that product. Boom, it came together and
it just made a sum greater than the sum of
the parts.
Speaker 2 (28:50):
Then in eighteen sixty three, those parts were attacked by
the Manhattan Workers' Union strikes, disrupting Steinway piano production.
Speaker 4 (29:00):
When the Furniture Makers Union decided to target the piano industry,
Steinway was the biggest, had the most prominent name, and
they decided to target Steinway and Sons. At that time,
he had a country house out here in Bowery Bay
in Queens, and I think he had a revelation one
day he said, wait a minute, New York's over there.
(29:21):
I have a house here. Here's all this land, the water,
the ocean is right there. I can bring my war
materials in here. I can move my factory here. And
I think he deliberately set about doing that, buying the
acreage out here, moving the company out piece by piece,
digging the tunnel underneath the East River. You know, the
Steinway tunnel was the first tunnel under the East River.
(29:43):
I took it this morning. When I took the subway
into Manhattan. The number seven train goes through the WILLIAMS.
Steinway Tunnel to.
Speaker 2 (29:49):
Get the workers out of the social unrest and union
riots in Manhattan. Steinway has his Steinway Village built in
a story of queens.
Speaker 4 (30:00):
And he built gymnasiums, libraries, churches, housing for his workers,
and a lot of it is still there. You can
see on the streets. You know, the streets have been renamed,
you know, thirtieth Avenue, thirty first Street, but you can
go to some of the housing that was the factory
housing and you can see chiseled on stone on the
side of the building Albert strassa Friedrich Strass, and that
(30:20):
was the names that William Steinway had for his original city.
Speaker 2 (30:23):
Then in eighteen eighty, Theodore returns to Germany in order
to open and operate a second factory in Hamburg. Since then,
they've split the global market into two parts. Here again
is Andy Horbachevsky, vice president of Steinley and Sons New York.
Speaker 7 (30:42):
We're one company, but we do manufacture in two plants
here in New York in one in Hamburg, Germany. And
there are subtle differences, certainly a little in terms of
just the finish and the high gloss versus the satin look.
But there are also some tonal differences. From our perspective
as a global company, we like the choice. There are
(31:05):
artists that prefer the New York instrument in Europe and
vice versa that in North America here some prefer the
Hamburg to us.
Speaker 6 (31:15):
We think that offering a choice is good and we
will not change that in the future.
Speaker 2 (31:22):
When the United States enters into World War two, Steinland
sons are no longer able to build pianos.
Speaker 4 (31:30):
Pianos were not deemed strategic materials during World War Two
in the United States. However, some of the things that
go into making the piano were deemed strategic materials. Copper,
for instance, all the copper in the United States was
going into the war efforts, so the piano makers were
not allowed to use copper. The wood that they had
at the factory, some of it was used for rifle stocks,
(31:53):
things like that. The government at one point was suggested
that Steinway make coffins. I think my grandfather, who had
four sons in the war, decided he didn't want to
make coffins. They did make glider airplanes for the war effort,
they did make about two thousand pianos for the war effort.
Small olive, drab government issue piano, the odgipiano, which I love,
(32:14):
came a little packing crate, had some music, a set
of tuning tools. They shipped them all over the world.
Speaker 2 (32:21):
The one hundred and fifty year old company produces about
two thousand handmade nine foot concert grand pianos a year,
compared with the approximately one hundred a day by other companies.
These magnificent instruments do not come cheap. One is shown
(32:42):
in the Steinway showroom in New York on West fifty
seventh Street, with a price tag of one hundred and
three thousand dollars. No wonder a prospective buyer is very
particular in choosing a specific piano. Each handmade instrument has
its own personality. The limited production hinges a lot on
the brand severe selection standards for timber. After all, eighty
(33:07):
five percent of the Steinway piano is made from wood.
Precious timbers from all over the world are neatly stacked
in Steinway's warehouses, and there they spend two years in
their natural drying process before the next step. Space between
them ensures good air circulation and the pliability of wood
(33:27):
after the drying process. Only fifty to sixty percent pass
the rigorous quality checks to become piano parts. As the
soundboard is the central part of a piano, the design
and the selection of the materials for it must be meticulous.
The artisans select the finest North American spruce spruce has
(33:48):
the desired regular grain to ensure a smooth resonance. Only
five to ten percent of the timber from one tree
can be used for the handmade soundboard by the experienced cars.
Australian concert pianist Piers Lane has specially flown to Hamburg
to choose three concert grands for his hometown Sydney.
Speaker 9 (34:11):
Which works as well. There's a singing sound with quality. Now,
it'd be interesting to compare that with the one down
the ends.
Speaker 2 (34:18):
Peers is attended to buy Steinway and Sun sales consultant
Garrett Glanner, who jots down notes while following Peers around
a brightly lit showroom filled with Steinway Grand pianos, that
we start with.
Speaker 9 (34:32):
The same thing. I don't feel it's got the same
fineness of quality as the other one in the tone,
(34:55):
but let's truy some mozart I don't feel it's got
the same depth of character as the other one. The
other one's got more core to the sound. I want
(35:16):
to compare that now with the first one.
Speaker 2 (35:18):
After a sound test marathon of six and a half hours,
the pianist makes his selections.
Speaker 9 (35:25):
It's interesting because it makes me play it in a
slightly different way. This piano.
Speaker 4 (35:28):
How do you feel the middle one is a kind
of a mixed topic.
Speaker 5 (35:32):
Boh, it's true.
Speaker 12 (35:34):
But if I should use the term no bliss, yes,
I would find it most in this way because there's
some extra I agree glimpse on you to know it,
and I think it has the beautiful kentigily.
Speaker 9 (35:47):
I like the balance of the piano exactly. It feels,
you know, even across the whole range. But at the
same time it has the classical transparency as well in
the texture.
Speaker 4 (36:07):
Periodically, there has been in the history of the piano.
The death bell has been summoned or been struck. You
know what happened in the nineteen twenties when player pianos
started and when radio came on, people said, oh, well,
nobody will listen to pianos anymore. After World War Two,
with Hi fi and television people said, oh, people won't
have pianos anymore in the fifties with electric pianos and
(36:31):
Hammond organs. No, people will never need pianos anymore. Didn't
happen then, hasn't happened now, you know. And still people
are improving, tinkering, as you say, a little bit with
the piano, just trying to find small improvements to it.
But there's nothing that can replace it. Nothing can replace
the sound of a grand piano well played.
Speaker 2 (37:06):
After seventy five years, in eighteen seventy one, an unusual
life journey comes to an end, a journey that took
the orphan from the Hearts Mountains in Germany to the
highest highs of music in America. Courage, perseverance, and family
were his strengths. After one hundred and fifty plus years
(37:29):
of turmoil, feuds, depressions, wars, competition from the far East,
nothing has silenced the Steinway sound, even if what Steinway
is now selling is its past rather than any technical innovation.
A New York Times reporter referred to the Steinway factory
as a resilient treasure in a city that wonders whether
(37:53):
it has lost its soul. With his Steinway and sons.
Piano Henry Steinway has made himself immortal. I'm Greg Hengler
and this is our American Stories
Speaker 1 (38:08):
And great job as always Greg, Henry Steinway, his story
here on our American Stories
Host
Lee Habeeb
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