![]() Ron Losby, president of Steinway & Sons Americas (and a pianist himself), says that the first time he toured the Queens factory on joining the company in 1987, “it was like voices from the past were speaking to me, voices of great craftsmen, the greatest pianists.” Those voices aren’t just relegated to history, though even in parlous economic times, the Queens factory remains alive with a craftsmanship that has been handed down and perfected over generations. Then one hears the shearing sound of wood being cut, the almost-musical thrum of wire being strung, and the pings of repeated strikes on keyboards as pianos get last-minute tweaks in the Selection Room.Īs you trod the well-worn factory floors, there comes a sensation beyond smells and sounds: an overwhelming sense of tradition. There is the strong, forest scent of wood left to season in hot, humid rooms as well as the more pungent smells of glue and paint. Visiting it is a heady sensory experience. First used as a sawmill and foundry-logs were floated down the nearby East River to Steinway’s lumberyard-the facility became Steinway’s lone New York production house in 1956. The American source of this alchemy is located in the Astoria section of Queens, in an old urban area that was mostly farmland when the facility was first laid out in 1870. That elusive quality is why Steinways were the instruments of choice for Vladimir Horowitz and Arthur Rubinstein, as they are today for Argerich, Lang Lang and so many other top pianists. Master pianist Martha Argerich has said that a Steinway can have a “strange magic,” this percussion instrument that can yield the illusion of legato, of singing. The process, a commingling of nineteenth-century methods and twenty-first-century technology, feels almost as organic as the trees that make up some eighty-five percent of Steinway’s instruments. While most pianos today are mass-produced out of expedience, Steinways are still handcrafted to age-old standards in just two factories: the original in New York and its younger sibling in Hamburg. But it cannot be said about Steinway pianos. “They don’t make them like they used to,” goes the refrain. Playbill has partnered with the award-winning music magazine. ![]()
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