Mar 13th 2020

The 88-tooth monster, doomed to evolve or die

by Michael Johnson

Michael Johnson is a music critic with particular interest in piano. 

Johnson worked as a reporter and editor in New York, Moscow, Paris and London over his journalism career. He covered European technology for Business Week for five years, and served nine years as chief editor of International Management magazine and was chief editor of the French technology weekly 01 Informatique. He also spent four years as Moscow correspondent of The Associated Press. He is the author of five books.

Michael Johnson is based in Bordeaux. Besides English and French he is also fluent in Russian.

You can order Michael Johnson's most recent book, a bilingual book, French and English, with drawings by Johnson:

“Portraitures and caricatures:  Conductors, Pianist, Composers”

 here.

 

The 88-key piano looks headed for a major transformation in the coming decades. The mechanism under the lid is based on a 130-year-old design and many specialists believe it is time to dispense with those delicate moving parts.  As innovative Australian piano builder Wayne Stuart says, “The piano has been crying out for a rethink for over a hundred years.”

Stuart has it right. The behemoth that once adorned middle-class salons East and West is already in steep decline. In the long term, it looks doomed. Owners often complain these pianos occupy too much space and nobody wants to take them away – not even for free. Only three piano makers survive in the United States compared to dozens just a few years ago. Some 80 percent of piano production is now in China, mostly for the Chinese market.

The trends are downward because of declining interest in piano study in Western cultures and competition from a dizzying array of digital devices that attract our young. These gadgets require no practice time, no studying and – most importantly – no waiting. As Jean-François Dichamp of the Barcelona Superior School of Music told me recently, “Learning to interpret music demands a lot of time and maturity. It seems the new generations are not prepared for this kind of patience.”

The “acoustic” piano, the 88-tooth monster, is threatened from another direction, even more pressing. New electronic models – the virtual pianos – storming in from Asia are undercutting the classic piano in price and performance with versatile digital or hybrid keyboards that feel and sound just about right. Young players love them. Yamaha, Casio, Guangzhou Pearl River, Samick, KORG, Kawai and others are competing in this transition period. Some concert pianists travel with their favorite electronic keyboard for a quiet run-through in their hotel room before a concert. It looks like a first step toward entry on the concert stage.

Schools and institutions, the bread-and-butter market for the industry, are showing a preference for the low cost and easy maintenance of digital systems. Sales projections are for electronic keyboards to exceed a million units worldwide annually within three years. Steinway, the market leader in acoustics, says it can produce only about 3,000 units a year.

The clunky, heavy, expensive classic piano, critics argue, may eventually end up in a museum by late in this century, displayed as beautiful furniture.

Before that happens, the acoustic piano still has some potential to change and improve.

Paris musicologist and pianist Ziad Kreidy recently collected views from twelve piano builders around the world and found that most are “not satisfied with the status quo”. Ironically, they consider that the market dominance of Steinway “unfairly stopped historical evolution”. In his recent book “Keys to the Piano” (Editions Aedam Musicae) Kreidy notes that a few innovative builders who have survived Steinway’s aggressive commercial strategies and aspire to offer “new possibilities for musicians, to widen acoustic horizons, to exceed Steinway and its competitors”.

German piano builder David Klavins says, for example, that new materials such as carbon fibre offer “significantly better options. In his experience, he told Kreidy, “I have discovered that virtually every aspect of the acoustic piano can be improved remarkably when and if builders begin to think outside the box…”

There is much conflicting data, with market forces pushing in opposite directions. But research indicates pressures are building for a “rethink” along Stuart’s and Klavins’ lines.

Piano innovation has a long history. When Franz Liszt joined forces with his French friend Sebastien Erard to introduce the last major improvement, the double-action piano that became the world standard in the 1770s, European music-lovers were both stunned and thrilled. Rapid repetition of single notes was suddenly possible. People by the thousands traveled to concert halls to hear the great Liszt demonstrate the new musical fireworks that Erard had enabled.

Liszt was the rock star of the 18th century. He roamed around Europe with his new Erard on loan, prompting ladies in his audiences to faint in ecstasy as he exploited the piano’s new potential. Other players quickly followed Liszt’s example.

But it was nearly 100 years later that Heinrich Steinway industrialized the production of his improved version, and his heirs still rule the piano world today, standardized and robotized in construction. Nearly all recent improvements have been cosmetic, however, lacking any “rethink” of any consequence.

The Steinway influence has not been entirely positive. Critics such as Stuart refer to the brand as “Stoneway” for its innovation lethargy. The latest “new thing” is the best Steinway can manage -- the Spirio. Aggressively marketed, it seems to be a toy for the very rich, delivering high-resolution recordings of leading pianists’ performances to run on a player piano in private homes. But who wants Lang Lang in their living room? Will a hologram of the Chinese showman be the next step? The technology is there.

To be sure, most leading pianists roll out their Steinways onstage and are satisfied once the tuner wrests the strings into shape. But often at intermission, after just an hour of Chopin or Rachmaninov, the strings need further attention from a tuner as the audience looks on.

Other brands struggle to maintain smaller share of the market in Steinway’s shadow. Each has its personality, measurable in tiny advantages. Boesendorfer, Fazioli, Grotrian, Sauter, Shigeru Kawai, Steingraeber  and Yamaha all claim to be the best. The American aphorism applies : Even if you are on the right track, you will get run over if you just sit there.

This century will almost certainly produce a new look, feel and technology for pianos – ones we are only beginning to imagine.

MJ New Piano

 

Experiments have already appeared on the market. Klavins’ creation (above) is seeking $6 million investment for development of his striking Model 408. Its mission, he says, is to “eliminate each and all acoustic and technological shortcomings that are associated with traditional grand pianos, including Steinway”.

Fazioli builds futuristic designs custom-made for billionaires Boesendorfer builds a 92-key “Imperial” known as the world’s most expensive piano at about  $180,000. It has never caught on.

Other innovations can be found here and there. Bigger keyboards with additional octaves, sounds that will rattle your teeth, micro-tonalities that make your head swim, electronic expansions that imitate entire orchestras – or useful things like canned laughter, stormy applause and even gunshots.

More innovation is coming just over the horizon. French piano builder Stephen Paulello, a pioneer in innovative design, has commercialized his Opus 102 model that offers an expanded keyboard of 102 keys. Soon he will launch a 108-key version, equal to that of Wayne Stuart’s world first, his Big Beleura.

 

MJ Wide Piano

 

 

Pianist Ashley Hribar, at the Big Beleura Australian keyboard (above) has recorded a CD, soon to be released, featuring revisions of Liszt’s Mephisto Waltz No. 1 and his own Paganini Variations, among others, transformed by the range of the 108-key instrument. Ears are bound to perk up.

He and other pianists who have tried this model say they cannot imagine returning to the standard 88-key model. In this clip, Hribar calls on the deep bass and high treble to enhance “Fingerbreaker”, the Jelly Roll Morton classic.

 

 

This is not to say the world has fallen out of love with the classic piano, whatever its limitations. No instrument comes close to producing such a range of sound, loud or soft, to convey the beauty of music.

MJ Khatia B
Khatia Buniatishvili by the author Michael Johnson

 

Can an estimated 60 million young Chinese students be wrong? They are studying and mastering Western piano music on the classic design. And international piano competitions exceed 750 worldwide, attracting Asians and Europeans as well as a few Americans. Conservatories such as Curtis and Juilliard are thriving on the influx of talented Asian students.
MJ Lang Lang
Lang Lang by the author Michael Johnson 

Leading players help keep seats filled in concert halls by staging dramatic performances in short skirts, low tops, high heels, and – for the men – eye makeup and acrobatic writhing, hair flicks and in Lang Lang’s case, the occasional wink at the audience. Audiences are divided between love and hatred of these excesses.

Contemporary composers are eager to contribute ideas to these expanded keyboards. Many encourage us to liberate old prejudices, to open our ears to new possibilities in piano music, new harmonies, new sounds. The first composer to write for the Stuart model is Brazilian composer Artur Cimirro. Others have adopted classics to incorporate the additional sonorities.

A leader in this world, Prof. Kyle Gann of Bard Collage in the United States, says you must listen to his micro-tonality work over and over again to learn – and unlearn – what a piano can do. His instrument uses computer technology to simulate more than 300 keys. A sample of his ethereal creations can he heard in his recent album “Hyperchromatica”.

 

 

 

We are lucky to be alive as the piano undergoes this metamorphosis. It will be an unsettling, disturbing period, just as Christofori, Erard and Heinrich Steinway dared to rethink the instrument in the 18th and 19th and 20th centuries.

 

Now it’s our century. Now it’s our turn.

----------

This article is based on a presentation recently delivered by the author at the Barcelona Superior School of Music of Catalonia.

 

For related articles, see:

Giant piano from Australia now accessible online

No, it’s not ‘crazy’ to want 20 more keys on your piano

 


This article is brought to you by the author who owns the copyright to the text.

Should you want to support the author’s creative work you can use the PayPal “Donate” button below.

Your donation is a transaction between you and the author. The proceeds go directly to the author’s PayPal account in full less PayPal’s commission.

Facts & Arts neither receives information about you, nor of your donation, nor does Facts & Arts receive a commission.

Facts & Arts does not pay the author, nor takes paid by the author, for the posting of the author's material on Facts & Arts. Facts & Arts finances its operations by selling advertising space.

 

 

Browse articles by author

More Music Reviews

Oct 7th 2024
EXTRACT: "Oppens stands apart from today’s keyboard virtuosos by her four decades of discovering and commissioning new works. These contributions to the repertory ensure her a permanent place in pantheon of modern music. But she is also recognized as a powerful performer who tackles the thorniest of new pieces. As she said in our interview, she remembers hearing the difficult works of Julian Hemphill for the first time and thinking 'This is for me!'  Composers who have been commissioned by her or who have written works for her include such leading lights as Frederic Rzewski, William Bolcom, Elliott Carter, John Corigliano, John Harbison, Julius Hemphill, Peter Lieberson, Conlon Nancarrow, Tobias Picker, Christian Wolff  and Charles Wuorinen.”
Jul 5th 2024
EXTRACTS: "The Conservative Party, which was finally pronounced dead from multiple unnatural causes on July 5 2024, was born in 1832." ---- " Strange as it might now appear, the party was once very popular and respected, even by its opponents. Educated at Eton and Oxford, it established a reputation for governing competence which allowed it to bounce back from serious setbacks, notably the landslide Labour victory of 1945." ---- "The end of the cold war debunked the notion that the Conservatives had restored Britain’s former global status. Unwilling to acknowledge their country’s subservience to the United States, the party’s dominant nationalist faction could now only rage against reality by identifying the European Union, and post-war immigration, as the twin culprits for the depletion of British political influence and cultural uniformity." ---- "The Conservative party has presented a sorry spectacle to sympathetic observers in its undignified post-Brexit dying days. It became prone to hallucinations, first believing that Boris Johnson could be a successful prime minister then replacing him with Liz Truss."
Jun 17th 2024
EXTRACT: "Question: Isn’t piano study a big problem in the USA, with all the electronic games and distractions from music lessons? ---- Answer: The problem is also in Europe. We have lost a lot of quality, in terms of knowledge behind the music. The schools do not make the transmission from the composers to us. We owe that to the composers. And it’s very sad because now we focus on goals and competition, and competition does not go well with art.
Jun 9th 2024
EXTRACT: "Question: Isn’t it true, as the musicologist Kyle Gann says, that one cannot judge immediately what’s good or bad in contemporary music? We must wait 20 years. Answer: Yes, look at Stravinsky’s “Rite of Spring”. It caused a scandal. It was booed and rejected by everyone. Now it’s standard in the concert hall. In jazz, I think it’s not 20 years, but more like 50 years before we know what has worked or not. One has to step back and reflect on whether we have brought something new."
Mar 9th 2024
EXTRACT: "In a way, every experience you have, every book you read, every movie you watch, every place you visit, every encounter you have, every moment you spend with friends or family, they leave a mark on you and direct you indirectly and therefore leave their mark on your playing.", says Boris Giltburg in Michael Johnson's and Frances Wilson's new book 'Lifting the Lid: Interviews with Concert Pianists', now available on Amazon.
Feb 27th 2024
EXTRACT: "Question: Some pianophiles say the CD could be useful for meditation, therapy or even healing. ---- Answer: Indeed, that is the kind of feedback I am getting. But this music doesn’t belong to me any more, therefore I cannot label it with any purpose. It has taken on a life of its own. I can’t say how it affects the life of other people. Will it be therapeutic or will it have another effect? Time will tell."
Dec 4th 2023
EXTRACT: "Seated in a quiet corner of a Bordeaux hotel last week, we had an interview – more a casual chat – about her life, her Soviet Russian origins, her career, her future."
Nov 27th 2023
EXTRACT: "Schiff creates an atmosphere that we 'seniors' remember from the old days. No clowning, no bouncing on the bench, no outlandish clothing. He dresses in a black smock, black trousers, black shoes, topped off with a mane of pure white hair. His manners, his grateful bowing, are très Old Europe. ---- Schiff keeps control of his two hours onstage. He believes that dignity goes with the great music on the program and he scarcely moves as he plays."
Nov 19th 2023
EXTRACT: "  Boston-based guitarist, band leader and composer Phil Sargent is not about churning out endless CDs. In fact his ten-year recording gap, just ended, had his fans wondering where he was. But in New York and Boston, he tells me, he has never stopped working with other groups while composing and actively teaching young and mature talent. Although not always visible, he seems to be a confirmed workaholic, even practicing five hours a day. Yes, virtuosos also need to practice. ---- And now he is back. His new CD, 'Sons'....."
Nov 19th 2023
EXTRACT: "There is a renewed fascination with the memory-stimulating and healing powers of music. This resurgence can primarily be attributed to recent breakthroughs in neuroscientific research, which have substantiated music’s therapeutic properties such as emotional regulation and brain re-engagement. This has led to a growing integration of music therapy with conventional mental health treatments."
Sep 28th 2023
EXTRACT: "British psychotherapist, Michael Lawson, who has worked with several prodigies and former prodigies, calculates there may be as many as 200,000 piano prodigies active in the world today. “In a sense, they are not that rare,” he says in our interview below. Lawson is author of International Acclaim: The Steinfeld Legacy a new novel of the great pianists of the 19th and early 20th centuries in which the prodigy phenomenon is described in some detail."
Sep 17th 2023
EXTRACT: "Like so many stories about relationships told over an extended time, Past Lives uncovers the twists and turns, the “what ifs” and the manifold choices that lead to two people wondering whether they were meant to be together."
Sep 12th 2023
EXTRACT: " OrpheusPDX, a new company founded by Christopher Mattaliano in Portland, Oregon, concluded its second season with a brilliant and thought-provoking production of Nico Muhly’s “Dark Sisters,” at Lincoln Hall (August 24), exploring and exposing relationships in a polygamous sect and the courage of one sister-wife to leave it. With Stephen Karam’s libretto inspired by memoirs of women who have left the FLDS (Fundamentalist Latter Day Saints) and the 2008 raid of the YFZ Ranch by the FBI, “Dark Sisters” was delivered with spot-on directing by Kristine McIntyre and riveting performances by an exceptional cast."
Aug 30th 2023
EXTRACT: "Wagner’s operas are well known to be budget busters, and lack of funds is probably one of the main reasons that Seattle Opera has not mounted the Ring Cycle in since 2013. After Speight Jenkins retired from his post as General Director in 2014, the company delivered The Flying Dutchman (2016) and Tristan und Isolde (2022), the latter under its current General Director, Christina Scheppelmann. Now starting its 60th season, Seattle Opera celebrated with Das Rheingold, but that can be seen as a bittersweet moment since Scheppelmann is moving on to take over La Monnaie/De Munt in Brussels at the end of the 2023-2024 season."
Jul 6th 2023
EXTRACT: " More than a hundred recordings have been made of his suite of 14 light pieces he called “The Carnival of the Animals”, and a range of his other works remain in the standard repertoire."
Jun 18th 2023
EXTRACT: "Conservatories and university music departments are filling up with fee-paying Asians as their parents pressure them to succeed in the West. Piano competitions around the world, now numbering about 800, are open to this new wave of Asian players. They are winning top prizes and they are building careers in Europe and the U.S.  Too often, according to some teachers, young Americans prefer computer games, the latest movies, rock bands, sports, or other less-demanding activities. The Asians are happy to fill the vacuum."
May 30th 2023
EXTRACT: "Three of Europe’s longtime leaders in contemporary jazz, now in their senior years, have just launched a CD of twelve  pieces that shows what a lifetime of sharing ideas in music can really produce." “New Stories” (Frémeaux et Associés) by the French trio of pianist and composer Hervé Sellin, bassist Jean-Paul Celea and drummer Daniel Humair is remarkable for improvisations so synchronized that the listener can feel the music come together from three angles in real time. The tracks were mostly composed or improvised by Sellin."
Mar 28th 2023
EXTRACT: "The young ex-dancer from Italy first burst upon the piano scene three years ago with 20 of her hand-picked Scarlatti sonatas. Now comes her second CD (Academy Classical Music) even more original and powerful, performing six of Baldassare Galuppi’s 18th century sonatas. Margherita Torretta‘s early training as a dancer gives her playing a swaying, graceful air while she maintains Alberti bass for control of the rhythm, momentum and especially continuity. Her ornamentation is boosted with some of her own improvisations, producing a fresher feel. It’s a magic combination."
Mar 24th 2023
EXTRACT: "Driven by a sense of mission and determination over several years, French pianist Lydia Jardon has completed a rare cycle of nine piano sonatas by Nikolai Miaskovsky. Her new CD  of numbers 6, 7 and 8 completes the task and offers a particularly rich sample of Russian experience in the worst of times. Miaskovsky may be only vaguely remembered today but he was a leader in the Soviet music world until the end of World War II. He left a wide range of engaging sonatas that have been brought back to life by Mme. Jardon on her own label AR Ré-Sé (AR 2022-1)."
Mar 16th 2023
EXTRACTS: "The most ambitious application yet of Steinway’s new digital piano, Spirio r, delivers stunning levels of sound and color in the new CD release of The Richter Scale, an hour-long keyboard drama written by well-known German composer and pianist Boris Bergmann." ----- "For the first time, the Spirio has been configured on a Steinway D grand to enable four-hand pieces to be played by two hands. The secondo score is first recorded in playback mode then combined with the live primo part. Liu is the live player who has to coordinate and fuse the two."---- "I took Bergmann’s advice and listened to the full composition from start to finish to best feel the gathering emotional turbulence. I was gripped by the melodies, harmonies, rhythms and percussive explosions along the way."