Dear Eric, Thank you for sharing this fantastic report, and congratulations to you and your school. As a fellow professional and a colleague, I share your excitement and sense of accomplishment. I could retire from the UT Butler School of Music with a much greater sense of achievement myself if our aging inventory was so dramatically upgraded. Especially in our current economic crisis, this 4.1 million agreement represents a significant accomplishment, and will assure employment and paychecks for many colleagues in the Steinway network for several more months--perhaps long enough to weather the worst of the economic storm. When a peer institution makes such a dramatic commitment to upgrade its piano inventory it benefits all of us, as it sets the bar higher for other institutions and stimulates the natural competitiveness among our administrators, who definitely notice and respond to these forces. If you were purchasing the Steinway piano of 30 or 40 years ago, I might raise an eyebrow. I have considerable experience with the Steinway piano of today, and feel that it represents a fine alternative among many fine builders, with the added advantage that it is a domestic firm. I say this not because I am such an "Buy American Only" fan, but also because of the current exchange rate volatility. We priced a Hamburg Steinway D last year and it was somewhere in the area of $134,000. When we priced one again this spring, it was $175,000, and that was primarily due to the exchange rate. A new American Steinway D was priced to us for more than $75,000 less. I can't find my information about the all-Steinway plan, but I do know that it allows a certain significant percentage of the inventory to be non-Steinway. And there are others ways to enjoy the all-Steinway prestige, while retaining other brands of instruments, including placing those instruments on the inventory of another department. Steinway will not turn away a 4.1 million dollar sale because of a few Bosendorfers and Yamahas on the premises, and I would never turn away a donor who wants to spend that kind of money to improve our inventory if they wanted to engage with the all-Steinway marketing effort. Personally, I definitely enjoy working on any fine instrument, and have taken strong and principled stands from a "diversity" point of view in the past. Mostly, I found it a lost cause. In the past, when dealers have placed trial instruments in our facilities for our faculty and students to assess, the response has typically been very tepid to say the least. The fact is that pianists continually encounter a diversity of instruments in homes, public and private schools, in stores, at competitions and conventions, in churches, in clubs and performance venues, etc. Many of us have had the puzzling and frustrating experience of proudly rolling out the beautiful and shiny new imported concert instrument for a visiting artist, only to have it rejected in favor of a battered old Steinway mouldering in the wings. I have at times reflected upon the seemingly deliberate contrariness of pianists; however, in recent years I have come to understand that, like most of us, pianists are creatures of habit, and prefer the touch and tone that they are familiar with and know how to manage, especially if there is little time to adjust to the new instrument. We do sometimes see gratuitously patronizing and unprofessional implications on this list that pianists really couldn't tell the difference and wouldn't notice if fallboards were switched, or that they are in the pocket of one manufacturer or another. Perhaps this might be true of some, but not of the finest teachers and artists who I have encountered. My belief is that there are many fine instruments available, but that it is not our job to try to tell pianists which instruments they should prefer or use. Some of our colleagues approach this topic as though it were a moral issue. It see it more as a practical and aesthetic issue, with, perhaps, some pedagogical implications as well. Nonetheless, which of us would presume to tell Joshua Bell that he should be ashamed of himself for alway playing the same, old Strad, and doesn't he know that there are many other fine luthiers out there? Would we similarly judge our woodwind players or brass players for preferring certain manufactures? All best regards, Charles On Nov 21, 2008, at 8:59 AM, Wolfley, Eric (wolfleel) wrote: > Hi All, > > Some of you may have already heard the news…Tuesday, the board of > trustees at the University of Cincinnati approved a deal with > Steinway that will make the Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music > an “All Steinway School”. We will be purchasing 165 new pianos for > the school all of which will be delivered before next June! This is > the single largest deal in Steinway’s history in terms of number of > units purchased. The total price tag is 4.1 million. This deal is on > the initiative of our new Dean, Douglas Knehans and is the > cornerstone of a new capital campaign and just one of a plethora of > sweeping moves he is making to improve CCM’s global image. Here’s a > link for the deal…there was also a NY Times article last Tuesday, > but I can’t seem to make that link active. > > http://www.uc.edu/news/NR.asp?id=9235 > > I just got back from NYC where we selected the first batch of > pianos, 2 D’s and 8 B’s and I was most happy to find the quality of > the pianos in the selection room to be excellent…we had no trouble > choosing our pianos. Our first shipment of 27 pianos arrives next > week. While the quality of our performance pianos here at CCM has > been perceived as excellent over the years, the age and quality of > the pianos in the practice rooms, classrooms and studios has been a > challenge. Before this deal, CCM had the largest inventory of > Baldwins anywhere in the world I’m sure. The average age of our > inventory here before this deal was 35 years so this will be quite > an improvement for many years to come. I have no qualms or > reservations about the deal…there’s no question the quality level of > our inventory is going way up. I am perfectly aware of the > challenges that the next year will pose with all these green pianos > but hey, there are worse problems to have. The nature of our jobs > here will change dramatically for years to come…much less > rebuilding, more tuning, voicing and regulating. I’ll keep you all > posted on how things go. > > Eric > > > > Eric Wolfley, RPT > Director of Piano Services > College-Conservatory of Music > University of Cincinnati Charles Ball ckball at mail.utexas.edu 512-923-2311 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://ptg.org/pipermail/caut_ptg.org/attachments/20081123/0bb500ac/attachment.html>
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