Piano: the Making of a Steinway Concert Grand

PIANO: THE MAKING OF A STEINWAY CONCERT GRAND: James Barron: Times Books (2006): nonfiction: 265 pages

This book is the biography of one piano – K0862, the 565,700th Steinway manufactured piano – made in New York City at the Steinway and Sons factory during 11 months of 2003 and 2004. Following the creation of this beautiful instrument gives the author a chance to review the painstaking handwork required to make a piano as well as the history of the Steinway Company.

This is a very interesting book if you love pianos and piano music. The manufacture of a piano is a complex process requiring painstaking precision. It’s fascinating to follow the life of a piano from raw wood to the concert hall. This handcrafted, $100,000 instrument now spends each concert season in the concert hall of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

If you’ve never looked inside a piano and have no idea how they work (it takes 4,752 moving parts for all the notes on a Steinway concert grand piano) it’s possible you will find the book too detailed. But the history of the piano and of the Steinway Company is a fascinating story, too, that is skillfully woven through the chapters of the book.

SH