Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Piano Forum Washington Post on Pianos

Agree completely. The article simply pointed out that there are other great pianos besides Steinway. It was not only about buying 9' grands. Nor was it geared for the type of person who regularly reads the Piano Forum. Nor was it directed towards wealthy people only. I think it was an excellent article.

Washington Post fan, eh?

You seem to simultaneously hold two viewpoints - that newspaper articles are necessarily hamstrung by the pressures on the medium, which slashes the content. At the same time, you point out the utility of such articles. Those are competing forces. And if you are a writer, you ought to know better than to praise articles which have had the life strangled out of them by the economic rationalism to which you obliquely refer. Personally, I find your ideology is all over the shop - particularly when you imply that you are a writer of some sort.

When you talk about how useful this article is to prospective buyers, you ignore the fact that it focuses entirely on concert grands. Prospective buyers of 9ft grands are not the market for this article. And the landscape for smaller, cheaper pianos is not the same as for 9ft grands. The article misses a lot of salient information about piano buying. It's stylised, ticks certain boxes that I often see ticked in cultural arts columns for the masses. I found the whole thing to be a curious hodgepodge. That's why I see it as a puff piece.

As far as you finding it useful for some nebulous group of buyers: well, you are virtually saying that you personally don't find it useful because you are more informed - but for those poor uninformed bozos, it might assist them. Are you not making assumptions for other people there? I can tell you that people who are wealthy don't just throw $100K at a piano for their kid without doing some homework. This article isn't the article that saves people from themselves.

If you like the article, fine. I didn't.

A more enlightened, lazy view would be to simply buy something with "stein" in the name--Steinway, Grotrian-Steinweg, Steingraeber, or Bechstein would do. 😀

That's what Albert Einstein would do.

I though it covered a lot of ground in a short space offering some food for thought.

A brief article can't cover everything in depth but that wasn't its purpose. The article simply points out there are other great pianos than Steinway. There is no conflict of viewpoints.

Readers will assume, mostly correctly, that the quality of a maker's concert grands mirrors the quality of their shorter pianos.

The article is valuable for virtually any buyer except those like Piano Forum regulars. PW regulars are mostly familiar with other great pianos besides Steinway, but 98% of piano buyers only are familiar with a handful of makers. That doesn't make them "uninformed bozos" at all. It simply means that because of Steinway advertising and the fact that 99% of the population aren't as interested in pianos as PW regulars, they know less about pianos.

Both the content and the purpose of the article are fine.

I have to agree with PL. I've read a number of piano articles in newspapers and the such that were mostly fluff. This article clearly was written by someone who did research on the subject and wrote an article that provided some interesting and useful information to the piano buying public.

Rich

And I enjoyed his quote !!

“The problem is that each Steinway is so different,” says Joey Calderazzo, an acclaimed jazz pianist who recently became a Blüthner artist. “I have no idea what I’m getting.” He adds, “If you find a Steinway that’s a good one, it’s as good as any other piano out there. [But] one in 30 Steinways are good. And you have other piano brands that are actually kind of changing the game.”

Very well put!

[As was Rich Galassini's post.]

I'm trading up to a Beerstein.

+1

These two made my day!

You forgot Steinlager...

Rick

Good article, many noteworthy comments and observations!

Here's one of my own:

The specific type paint brush used didn't make Picasso and the type piano used doesn't make a great musician.

There's always too much talk about the tool and not enough about the art.

Just to put a little different perspective on things.

One that hopefully puts more emphasis on what you and me really enjoy about the subject - including "the beast"

Norbert

Greetings,

I did not get the impression that it was all that well researched and written. As is pretty frequent in the news media, the author seemed to pick a hypothesis, and selectively find data to support it. For example, Joey Calderazzo seems to be a pretty rare breed as a Blüthner-certified Blüthner artist. Is he an outlier or is there some special circumstances behind his opinion (like jazz club pianos suck in general)? Can't tell. No statistics behind it. Of the hundreds of Steinway artists, the author could have found a handful of them to get more statistics, and she might have even found one that had something positive to say about S&S pianos, but that wouldn't support the angle she had in mind.

Also, Mr Bennett winked/snickered on this. I quote him: "I think that statistics like "98% of soloists chose Steinway" is a marketing message packaged as a statistic, "according to figures collected by, not surprisingly, Steinway itself. "

That's exactly what the author intended-- to make the reader snicker. The author could have looked into the stats for herself to see if there was a problem, and report different stats if she found significantly different results, or if the data was flawed in some way. But instead, she just left it for the reader to read between her lines and she left the reader with the feeling of uncertainty and doubt.

Just two examples.

Best wishes-

Hey Phacke, I thought I would make a quick response. Interviews are funny things because we talked for almost an hour.Many things were said and honestly many of them good. I don't pretend to think I know much about pianos but i do know what I like and what feels good..Have always said that a piano will only be as good as its cared for. I find that pianos that are tuned and regulated on a regular basis are at least playable regardless of the brand..I guess my "beef" with Steinway is due to the horrible selection in NYC. I was there last Jan and was shocked at how bad the pianos were..I was also not thrilled with the cocky attitude of the women that was showing me the pianos.Her attitude was that all the pianos were different and that there was one for everyone.I played 8 B's and all were different,too different honestly..I did play some great pianos in the basement were the C&A pianos are kept..there were a few great ones..A few months later I was in Los Angeles and went to Beverly Hills Steinway..The pianos were GREAT!!!..It made me happy ..You must understand that the sound in my head from listening to records as a kid is STEINWAY..when a Steinway is right,its magic!! The women at Beverly Hills told me that when the pianos arrived,their tech worked on the pianos for DAYS!!!..
On the flip side,I was at a dealer when they took a Fazioli out of the crate.Put the legs on and it was amazing!!..or shall I say it was finished before it was crated..
My real thought is that a Steinway B is like 98k or something..FOr the pianos I played in NYC,I would never consider it for a second..I am thrilled that I am Blüthner Artist,as I am in love with all aspects of the piano.(especially the model 2).This is really a huge honor for me..A few years ago when I really started to play other piano brands(european) it was clear to me that I needed a different piano to achieve the sound that was in my head..I will be recording a bit this year with Bluthner model 1 and 2 and will post some clips here for you to hear..All the best,Joey

Joey,

Thanks for joining us here. I am thrilled that you joined this thread.

Over the years you and I have had many conversations. I know you've performed on a variety of instruments over the years, some by choice, others because that was the piano that was there.

I also know that you have gone out of your way to audition a number of pianos, even traveling to do so.

Would you mind outlining your journey for us? What were the particular brands or piano houses that have impressed you?

First, I hope you see this and second, I hope you have time to respond.

Yours,

Joey:

Your experiences and thoughts echo my own, almost scarily so.

Excellent remarks by Rich, as usual.

Karl Watson,
Staten Island, NY

Thanks for your comments, Mr. Calderazzo -



That's more or less an element of my point, so thank you for confirming.

When you read a newspaper article and you experienced the article event first-hand, the impressions usually don't coincide well.



That's wonderful.

Best wishes-

Thank you for saying what is always running through my mind when I read these sorts of debates. I understand the idea behind the talk about one piano allowing for expression that another piano doesn't. But it's the built-in elitism that is tiresome. Remember that experiment with blindfolded musicians and different violins?

I've recently been reading through some of Franz Mohr's autobiography (which if you were to edit out all the religiosity, would be about half it's size). And I can't help but come away from it with a certain amount of envy. Were that we could all have both our pick of piano and a friendly German perfectionist technician. If nothing else, some of this argument about which piano is good/better/best would be moot.