[CAUT] Steinway or Forgery?

[Fred Sturm]

On Apr 23, 2009, at 8:30 AM, Wolfley, Eric (wolfleel) wrote:

> The piano he is discussing here (1984 Steinway D) which is now in a  
> jazz/orchestral rehearsal room was, until our recent piano  
> purchases, our #1 instrument in our large concert hall and was used  
> mainly for orchestral concertos and the like. It wasn't our best  
> piano historically but it is pretty nice. When I started here in  
> 1998 it was badly in need of action work and at that time I  
> installed Renner parts and Abel concert-weight hammers since at that  
> time it was difficult to get reliable parts and hammers from Steinway.

	I have one almost identical (sounds like - though I haven't done the  
parts replacement Eric describes) at the large concert hall at UNM -  
not part of the music department, but I kind of take care of it. Those  
one part ivories are very nice, but tend to want to split. Ten or so  
have splits started at the corners, and a couple have major splits  
that run through almost to the front - fortunately just cosmetic, not  
something you feel. I'm not sure what I will do if they get worse.  
Maybe they won't.
	The piano has served well, used by the symphony when they have been  
too broke to afford moving etc for the C & A, or when someone hasn't  
liked the C & A (which has happened for a few seasons here and there).  
Awadagin Pratt played Beethoven #3 on it about a month ago, along with  
Orli Shaham on #4 (part of a Beethoven Festival). Awadagin was good,  
but Shaham was amazing! The piano could have been better, but it was  
certainly adequate.
	This is the instrument I first washed excess lacquer and keytop out  
of. There had been another tech doing some gigs there, and he had  
notions of keytop that were a little outrageous - obviously he had  
heard about it but hadn't been shown how thin it should be and how  
little should be used. I did manage to get them back to usable, from  
utterly horrible. New hammers would be nice when I have the time and  
they have the money.

Regards,
Fred Sturm
University of New Mexico
fssturm at unm.edu