Pianos, Pianists and the Production of Sound

Gracia Lee, Yale University

This paper draws on an oral history collection containing interviews conducted with concert pianists designated as “Steinway Artists” to examine the significance of the modern piano, as object and technology, for elite piano performance. These interviews were recorded between 1978 and 1980 with renowned pianists, including but not limited to Van Cliburn, Arthur Rubinstein and Claudio Arrau. The paper demonstrates how elite pianists give meaning to sounds and their profession through encounters with Steinway & Sons pianos. Often, pianists differentiate between American, European and Japanese brands of pianos, Steinways manufactured in New York and Hamburg, and Steinways available across countries and concert venues. While expressing preferences for tone, touch and action, pianists also describe strategies for adapting their technique to different pianos or repertoire, attribute the quality of the instrument to technicians who maintain them and personify these instruments in an attempt to wrestle with mechanical faults. Using these interviews and secondary sources, the paper further considers how aesthetic experiences are shaped by the commercial takeover of the family-owned business, historical dynamics of the musical profession and evolution of keyboard instruments.

No extended abstract or paper available

 Presented in Session 154. Aesthetics, Materiality, and Ideology