“Note by Note: The Making of Steinway L1037” follows the painstaking yearlong process of building and fine-tuning a handmade nine-foot concert grand piano in the Steinway company’s factory in Astoria, Queens. A paean to the rewards of old-fashioned craftsmanship in an age of mechanization, the film, directed by Ben Niles, amounts to a de facto infomercial for Steinway & Sons, the 150-year-old company that is the biggest name in the high-end piano business. Steinway produces about 2,000 pianos a year, compared with the approximately 100 a day by other companies, none of whose names are mentioned.
Among the musicians shown testing and selecting pianos are the jazz pianists Marcus Roberts, Harry Connick Jr., Bill Charlap, Kenny Barron and Hank Jones. From the classical side come Lang Lang, Pierre-Laurent Aimard and Hélène Grimaud. Their appearances are tantamount to testimonials. The completed L1037 is the piano of Ms. Grimaud’s dreams, and we hear excerpts from her performances of two pieces by Rachmaninoff.
These magnificent instruments do not come cheap. One is shown in the Steinway showroom in New York on West 57th Street with a price tag of $103,400. No wonder a prospective buyer is very particular in choosing a specific piano. Each handmade instrument has its own personality. Some yield brighter sounds, while others have deeper, more muted timbres.
The touch also varies considerably. Mr. Connick, who describes himself as “rather heavy-handed,” prefers “a deep, heavy action,” which means that notes have to be hit harder than average to make a desired sound. “I like the piano to play back a little bit,” he says.
Lang Lang compares the best pianos to great actors for their ability to convey extremes of emotion and attitude. It was the flamboyant pianism in a Tom and Jerry cartoon, he says, that originally drew him to the instrument.
Most agree that the individual sound of a handmade piano, as opposed to one made by machine and tuned by computer, is one of its glories.
“If you do it by computer, it sounds like a synthesizer — like a machine,” observes a factory specialist, known as a rough tuner.
Each concert Steinway consists of 12,000 parts assembled by as many as 450 people. In addition to a rough tuner, some of the craft experts interviewed include a case maker, a plate fitter, a grand finisher, a belly maker, a stringer and a fine tuner. The movie shows them at work, measuring, fitting, sanding and tightening parts. An artisan with an experienced hand and a trained ear can sense the effects of minute adjustments that a machine could never take into account.
As these satisfied workers describe what they do and how their tradition is handed from generation to generation, you sense that it is not about to die anytime soon.
NOTE BY NOTE
The Making of Steinway L1037
Opens today in Manhattan.
Produced and directed by Ben Niles; director of photography, Ben Wolf with Luke Geisbuhler, Mr. Niles and Geoff O’Brien; edited by Purcell Carson and Mr. O’Brien; released by Plow Productions. At Film Forum, 209 West Houston Street, west of Avenue of the Americas, South Village. Running time: 81 minutes. This film is not rated.
No comments:
Post a Comment