The Piano: The Unsung Hero of the Chopin Competitions

1937chopin_competition.jpg, default, The 3rd Chopin Competition Final in Warsaw, 1937. On the left, the jury members are seated; on the right is a participant at a Bösendorfer piano. Phot

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Steinway, Bechstein, Kawai, Yamaha or Fazioli – participants in the 19th Chopin Competition will have a choice of pianos from among these brands. This year’s winner will play one of them.

Piano brands, their types, sound quality and technical proficiency have always been a quiet element of rivalry at piano competitions, both between musicians-performers and the manufacturers of these ‘sound tools’. The latter supply the instruments and also provide their own top technicians and tuners. The ‘wrestling match’ among the largest and most famous manufacturers dates back to the 19th century, when instruments competed with one another not only on the concert stages of particular continents but also at national and international industrial exhibitions. The first exhibition of international rank, the Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of All Nations, took place in 1851 at the Crystal Palace in London. It was followed by others, including the 1889 Paris Exposition, for example, for which the Eiffel Tower was built.

The Steinway company, still famous today, was founded in 1853 in Manhattan, New York, by the German emigrant Heinrich Engelhard Steinweg. Just two years after its making, by combining excellent European craftsmanship with American technological advancements, the Steinway piano received excellent reviews at the national industrial exhibition at New York’s Crystal Palace (such structures, made of metal frames filled with glass, were intended precisely for exhibition purposes). It was not until the 1867 Paris Exposition, however, that it began to conquer European markets, outperforming other, equally successful companies from the United States thanks in part to Steinway’s excellent advertising policy. This policy included providing practice instruments to outstanding pianists – for example, Ignacy Paderewski, Anton Rubinstein and Artur Rubinstein – and organizing major concert tours for them in America. Thanks to its commercial success, the company was able to open a showroom in London in 1875 and a factory branch in Hamburg in 1880 that still exists today.

Among the leading European manufacturers of the time, competing local factories that adopted the American production model also surfaced. This included the company founded in Berlin in 1853 by Carl Bechstein, as well as the older Ignaz Bösendorfer factory in Vienna, operating since 1828 (taken over from Joseph Brodmann). Previously renowned French, English and Viennese factories gradually lost the concert piano market due to their adherence to outdated standards and archaic designs. Despite global economic crises, Steinway and Bechstein maintained their hegemony in the European market during the interwar period of the 20th century, but rival manufacturers Yamaha and Kawai emerged in the following decades.

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Poster for the 7th Chopin Competition in 1970

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Sounds from the East

Torakusu Yamaha, a watchmaker and harmonica manufacturer, built the first Japanese piano in 1900. Although his instrument won the Honorary Grand Prize at the 1904 World’s Fair in St Louis, the company, known at the time as Nippon Gakki (renamed the Yamaha Corporation in 1987), focused for many years on the domestic market. In the 1960s, after production improvements, it appeared with a subsidiary factory first in the Americas and then on European stages. In 1965, it became the largest piano manufacturer in the world. Like Steinway, it had its own pianists promoting its instruments internationally, including Sviatoslav Richter, Glenn Gould and Krystian Zimerman. Yamaha concert pianos appeared in the world’s leading piano competitions in the 1980s, including the International Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow and the Chopin Competition in Warsaw.

Koichi Kawai was a student of Torakusu Yamaha’s and an employee of his company. He left in 1927 to establish his own factory, later known as Kawai Musical Instruments Manufacturing Company, in the Japanese city of Hamamatsu. In the 1970s, they began using the thermoplastic polymer ABS instead of wood to produce hammer action parts. ABS was known for its resistance to impact and temperature changes and was used, among other things, in toy manufacturing. In the 21st century, ABS was combined with carbon fiber, making the company’s instruments more stable in sound, durable and resistant to intensive use, as practice pianos as well.

In addition to these Japanese companies, the slightly younger but no less significant South Korean Young Chang Piano deserves attention. Founded in 1956 by three brothers – Jung-Ju, Jai-Ju, and Hyo-Ju Kim – it is also active in the American and German markets.

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Martha Argerich at the Steinway piano. Rehearsing for the final stage of the 7th International Chopin Piano Competition, National Philharmonic, Warsaw, 1965. Photo: National Digital Archives (NAC)

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Handcrafted

The Italian manufacturer Fazioli emerged in the final decades of the 20th century. It was founded by Paolo Fazioli, who came from a family of carpenters and furniture makers. His musical and technical interests culminated in his graduating in 1969 with an engineering degree from the University of Rome and in 1971 with degrees in piano studies from the Gioachino Rossini Conservatory in Pesaro and in composition studies from the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia in Rome. He began building his own instruments in the 1980s, handcrafted from start to finish. With a small crew, he produced anywhere from a dozen to several dozen pianos in 12 months. In the new century, the factory produces up to 150 per year. This brand’s instruments soon gained a reputation as the best in the world and are eagerly used by performers at international piano competitions. At the 18th International Chopin Piano Competition in Warsaw in 2021, a 278-centimeter Fazioli piano was played by, among others, 1st-prize winner Bruce Liu from Canada, 3rd-prize winner Martín García García from Spain and 5th-prize winner Leonora Armellini from Italy.

The term ‘handcrafted’ is most often understood as artistic craftsmanship, being the opposite of factory production. Few people, even musicians and music aficionados, know that no professional musical instruments – with the exception of electronic ones – are machine made today. Until around the mid-19th century, the entire piano was built by a master, meaning they would handcraft it, sometimes with the help of their apprentices and journeymen. Larger factory workshops also emerged, where several or several dozen masters or journeymen worked at several or several dozen workshops, or carpentry benches, building instruments from start to finish.

Only with the introduction of the division of production into individual stages handled by separate teams of workers can we speak of a factory production system. This involved the creation of specialized departments within the plant, including a wood drying room, a carpentry shop and a paint shop. A separate area was also created for building the action mechanism along with its adjustments, stringing and tuning.

This remains the case today.

Only some of the preliminary work in a ‘piano factory’ is aided by machinery: drying, cutting, bending and gluing wooden materials, casting metal frames, producing tuning pegs and strings, manufacturing keyboard components and hammer mechanisms, etc. Further assembly and adjustment work is entirely manual, performed by specialists in assembling individual instrument parts and sets, followed by professionals in stringing and tensioning, tuners, mechanical regulators and others.

The product of a factory, or rather a piano manufacturer, is therefore a genuinely handcrafted instrument. Thus, pianos from a single production run are not entirely identical in sound and technical terms, and musicians choosing them in the showroom try out instruments from among several or a dozen theoretically identical ones.

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Bruce (Xiaoyu) Liu poses after his performance in the final of the 18th Chopin Competition in 2021, standing next to a Fazioli piano. Photo: Wojciech Grzędziński / NIFC

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Pianos at the Chopin Competition

Starting in 1927, with the first Chopin Competition, the selection of piano companies depended not only on current fashion but also on the availability of these rather expensive instruments during difficult economic times, such as the global depression of the 1930s or after World War II.

Little is known about the instruments used during the first edition of the piano competition. Extant photographs document only the participation of the German company Blüthner from Leipzig, although pianos from other leading European and American brands were likely also used. The 2nd Chopin Competition in 1932 featured pianos from Steinway & Sons (manufactured in New York and Hamburg), among others, and a plebiscite among pianists for the best and most popular piano was won by a Bösendorfer manufactured in Vienna.

The 3rd Competition in 1937 featured pianos from Bechstein, Bösendorfer, Steinway and even the Parisian Pleyel, while the 4th Competition in 1949 featured a piano made by Ibach, the oldest German piano manufacturer, founded in 1794, alongside those by Bechstein, Blüthner and Steinway.

During the auditions for the first four competitions, candidates practiced on instruments in private homes, an approach that would occasionally be used in later years as well when the number of participants exceeded the availability of pianos at local music schools. In 1955, during the 5th Chopin Competition, 70 practice instruments were installed at the Polonia Hotel, where the participants were accommodated, and two Steinway pianos and one each from Bechstein, Blüthner, Bösendorfer and Pleyel were made available for the competition auditions. Steinways were the most popular.

Bechstein Returns to Warsaw, Nobu, photo: Natascha Kornilowa

At the 9th Chopin Competition in 1975, performances were delivered on a Bechstein, a Bösendorfer and two Steinways. Unfortunately, there is no information about the pianos used during the 10th Chopin Competition in 1980. Five years later, at the 11th Competition, Japanese pianos from Yamaha and Kawai appeared for the first time alongside a Bösendorfer and two Steinways.

The biggest surprise of the 12th Chopin Competition in 1990 was the lack of a winner. Second prize was awarded to Kevin Kenner, who was participating in the competition for the second time, having received an honorable mention ten years earlier, in 1980. ‘Even the unprecedented choice of seven pianos apparently did not help the pianists create convincing interpretations’, it was written. The names of these pianos are unknown, just as there is no information regarding the instruments from the 13th Competition, held five years later.

It wasn’t until the 14th Competition in 2000 that greater importance was placed on pianos, with the audience being informed about their brand and even their serial number. At that time, out of two Steinways, one Kawai and one Yamaha, two-thirds of the competitors chose Steinways.

We don’t know exactly which instruments were available to the pianists in the 15th edition of the musical competition in 2005, but at the 16th Chopin Competition in 2010, a Fazioli piano appeared for the first time alongside those by Steinway, Kawai and Yamaha. Nevertheless, about half of the competitors chose Steinways.

During the 17th Competition in 2015, 35 pianists chose Yamaha, 31 chose Steinway, 11 chose Kawai and one chose Fazioli. In 2021 (the 18th edition), 64 people played Steinways (of whom 43 chose the instrument with factory number 611479, while 21 chose the instrument with number 612300), nine chose Yamaha, eight chose Fazioli and six chose Kawai.

In the qualifying rounds for this year’s 19th Chopin Competition, participants were able to choose between two grand pianos: Yamaha and Steinway. The former was chosen by 35 pianists, and the latter by 127 pianists. During the competition itself, pianists will have pianos from Bechstein, Fazioli, Steinway and Yamaha at their disposal. Participants won’t have much time to choose an instrument – only 15 minutes. Most likely, just to be on the safe side, they will sit down at pianos from a brand they know from home or university.

Written in Polish by Beniamin Vogel

Translated by Michał Pelczar

Language English