For all of you who love and appreciate piano music, you will want to watch Note by Note: The Making of Steinway L1037. It will be airing on PBS beginning this Monday. You can check your local listings at: http://www.pbs.org/notebynote/airdates.html. This 1 hour program describes the making of a Steinway concert grand from the selection of the wood for the cabinet and sound board to the finished product found in homes and concert halls throughout the world. Did you know that a Steinway grand is made up of 12,000 parts, takes 12 months to manufacture, and involves countless hours of work by 450 craftsmen to complete the finished product.
A few years ago, I had the pleasure of a personal tour of the Steinway factory when one of my adult students was in the process of selecting a Steinway B model for his home. The Steinway B is just under 7 feet long. My student drove us to the original Steinway factory in Astoria, Queens, New York on a quiet morning. We were given a personal tour of the factory by the sales manager and saw pianos in various stages of production. We even saw where the original coal fired furnace was. The building dates from the 1890s. Of course everything is modernized today. We tried a few of the pianos that were still in the factory, and then the sales manager drove us across the bridge to Manhattan where I helped my student choose a beautiful Steinway B for his home.
For more about the program visit: http://notebynotethemovie.com/.
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