PIANO PLAYS
It takes over a year to lovingly hand-craft a Steinway grand piano
here in Hamburg, Germany.
It's a hard job to learn and a lot of teaching,
a lot of explaining again and again over years.
A concert grand piano is nurtured and tended to throughout its long life.
Each person has their own skills and areas that they're good at
and it's the combination of all of these that gives us the end product.
The relationship between instrument and maker doesn't end
when the piano leaves the factory.
In the London workshop, they are carefully restored
and maintained with just the same attention to detail...
..everyone working with the same objective...
..to build an instrument that stands the test of time.
The life of a concert piano begins here
at Steinway & Sons' Hamburg factory.
There are over 300 artisans,
hand-building around 1,200 pianos each year.
Steinway is an instrument with an international pedigree,
which began when piano maker Heinrich Steinweg
moved from Germany to New York in 1850.
Steinweg Americanised his name and formed a new company,
Steinway & Sons.
At a time when a piano was the most desirable object to have in the home,
there was fierce competition to make the best piano.
Pioneering techniques like rim bending
were products of America's industrial age.
Steinway combined this with his European design experience
to form his grand piano's signature shape.
The techniques are unchanged today.
After bending layers of aged maplewood into a single piece,
the piano rim is then held in place
while the glue sets over a six-hour period.
Most of the craftsmen and women in Hamburg
specialise in a single discipline.
Gunther Schmitt has been with Steinway since 1981,
almost all of his time spent in the damper department.
I was very young when I started
and my plan was to work five years here.
After one, I make my master
and, you see, now I'm here.
The damper team spend up to 16 hours on each piano.
Every single damper comes up when you press a key
and this is very important to play like an artist with the pedal,
with feeling in your feet.
Operated by the foot pedals,
the dampers control the piano's resonance.
For me, this is a very important part of the piano.
It's a hard job to learn and a lot of teaching,
a lot of explaining, again and again over years.
The intimate knowledge gained over decades at the Hamburg factory
is often passed on through generations of artisans.
Many of the piano makers stay with the company their entire working lives.
For over 140 years, Steinway has had a prominent presence in the UK.
The old workshop is home to some of the music industry's
most respected craftsmen.
As well as looking after the concert grands,
they lovingly restore vintage Steinways,
giving them a new lease of life.
This is just like the piano in the photo, isn't it?
It takes six years to train in all the different departments
and become a fully qualified piano technician.
There you go.
I trained as a classical pianist at the Royal Welsh Conservatoire
but I was looking for something that meant I wasn't...
The piano wasn't the main focus.
You know, sat at a piano but... Do you know what I mean?
Playing-wise, I didn't want
playing the piano to be a main focus any more.
But I still love the instrument.
This is just littering the frame,
so on its own, it will take probably around about
three hours or something like that.
It depends on the complexity.
If you get an old Style A, which is around 1800s,
late 1800s, they have a lot of writing on the frame
and they have an extra bar that goes across with writing on
and it's all down here as well,
so that takes a little bit extra.
The iconic iron frame forms the spine of this huge instrument.
Back in the Hamburg factory,
it is covered over twice with Polyfilla and sanded down
to give a smooth finish
ready for the decorative bronzing to be applied.
In their quest for the best piano design,
the Steinway family were both innovators and opportunists.
Steinway drew on his European experience as a piano maker
and the inventions of some of his rivals
to redefine the sound of the most popular instrument in the world.
By raising the sound board bridges to different levels,
cross-stringing onto a single-piece cast iron frame
became a Steinway signature.
This combination of European innovations
with the power of Steinway's cast iron frames
was the secret to their early success
and an important stage in the development of the modern piano.
London's Steinway Hall received its first Royal Warrant in 1890.
Originally awarded by Queen Victoria,
it has retained it ever since.
Ulrich Gerhartz is responsible for maintaining
the royal family's collection of Steinways
as well as a fleet of Model D grand pianos,
often called on for concerts around the country.
People never realise how long it takes to work on pianos
because they don't realise it's always 88 notes
and there's about ten adjustments per note,
so there's a hell of a lot of work to do.
When you take the piano apart, people's eyes sort of go "pop".
Because, of course,
it's always a unit that is never actually taken apart,
very much like people drive their cars
and hardly ever look under the bonnet.
By going into detail of how the mechanic works,
it allows the player actually to draw more sound out of the piano.
It's vital to the piano's performance for all the elements
under its finely polished lid to work together perfectly.
In selecting wood for the sound board,
75% of it gets sent back.
For the tone and sound of the strings to be amplified effectively,
it has to be flawless.
The veneering department houses two generations of craftsmen
from the same family.
These veneers create bespoke wood finishes,
special editions for customers after a designer object
as much as a musical instrument.
Piano showrooms like the one in London
sell these prestige versions at a premium.
When I first started,
the concert grand was £2,900,
which was a vast sum of money when I was on £9 week.
I'm just off of £9 a week now,
but the concert grand is now 138,000, something like that.
Still this huge difference.
Wow. Now, that looks more like it.
An old Steinway piano holds its value, not just financially
but also on a personal level.
My mum used to say,
"Well, there's always money around
"and people will always spend their money on good quality products,"
and she was proved right.
As the prices have gone up over the years,
the people have still maintained buying them.
With vintage pianos being a desirable product,
the craftsmen in the London workshop also buy old pianos
to restore and sell on.
They have been known to fetch up to £120,000.
PIANO PLAYS
In contrast to the Hamburg factory,
where workers focus on a single discipline,
the technicians at Steinway Hall learn how to fix and rebuild
every part of a piano.
Jeff Prett worked on his first piano as an 18-year-old back in 1969.
After 47 years with the company,
this is his final week at Steinway.
This is my work area, all around here.
All my tools and bench and so on.
I've been in this little corner for the last,
erm, I can't remember exactly how long.
Time sort of slips under the door very quickly, so...
There we go.
You're using your ears a tremendous amount
in everyday type of work, you know,
listening for little noises, clicks, buzzes and bangs.
My hearing problems came a few years ago
when I was tuning away and all of a sudden I couldn't hear the top end
of the piano at all in one ear,
which I still can't,
and the left ear is...
It's these notes here,
round that area, they all sound the same to me.
Times move on. Nothing remains the same.
That's the drawing for the leg plates
and exactly where we know where the new leg plate's going to go
in relationship to the leg.
And then, when Rob and all these other people come to do it,
they know exactly where the leg's got to go.
Jeff sort of took me under his wing
and you can tell he knows his onions.
You know, he knows his stuff.
So, yeah. I was a little bit nervous, weirdly.
Does it come up any better than that?
That seems darker than that. Yeah?
It's cos it's more stained. It's like that.
Yeah. All right. I can get it better.
Well, in that case, you said it.
JEFF LAUGHS
He will always do the long-winded,
proper method that looks good,
looks right and will work
over the one that is more time convenient
or do the job.
He'll always do the more...
the proper fix.
That's it. That's what we want.
Excellent.
As the next generation of master craftsmen
start out on their own musical journeys,
the Model D grand pianos in Hamburg
are well on their way to becoming the finished article.
A pianist relies on their sense of touch.
The regulation department are all about meticulous attention to detail.
Here, they make sure every key has the same action
and the response is consistent across the whole keyboard.
The texture and flexibility in the hammerhead
ensures every note of the piano has the widest possible range.
Wiebke has been at Steinway for over 36 years
and oversees quality control.
She checks the sound of every instrument
before it leaves the factory.
Any chance I get, I play.
I stay behind after work
and usually stay behind for a few hours
and just, yeah, get a bit of practice in.
It's not a bad practice room, to be honest.
Once I started work,
piano playing in the workshop was highly frowned on, so...
There to work, not play.
If you want to play, you go to the College of Music,
so there was that.
It takes over 12 months
and 12,000 parts to build a Steinway Model D piano.
Once the instrument is complete,
it is ready to take centre stage.
All the painstaking months of hard work
now lie in the hands of Ulrich,
who works closely with many of the world's leading performers.
The pianos only really prove their mettle when they go on stage.
The nice thing is that it combines craft with a whole musical side
with a side of working with people who are artists.
It's very much like being a conductor
that conducts the orchestra of the piano
and makes sure that all the sections play together
rather than sort of individual.
World famous pianist Lang Lang has worked with Ulrich
since his Proms debut in 2001.
All ready! This is the piano you know. 131. This one's great. Yeah.
You need to always work with the best, you know,
friend, basically.
You know, with the piano technician, we became so close because
they work with musicians so closely and we make the change together.
The relationship between pianist and tuner is crucial,
not only getting the most out of the instrument but also the venue.
Do we have a little bit of the acoustic thing
or is it a natural sound?
No, they will... You see the mic rows?
So they have a little bit of amplified? Yes.
'You see the guys over there? When you want more, they'll tell you.'
Yeah, so from the middle C is a little bit dry, the sound.
You think so? Yeah. Maybe the keys, I don't know.
It just felt a little bit thick.
Do you want me to add a little bit of reverb to make it feel...?
Yeah, just a little bit from middle C. OK. No problem.
To stay in the same job for 47 years is a pretty remarkable achievement.
Nowadays, in our world of zero-hour contracts,
the average stay in one job is apparently about four years.
Just how many pianos has Jeff improved over these years?
Just how much goodwill has this likeable
and brilliant technician created for Steinway?
APPLAUSE
Skilled men and women spend their lives
hand-making these beautiful and complex instruments.
Every minute, every hour, every key
and every note
to create something more than just a mere object.
It creates an experience.