Steinway & Sons

Steinway & Sons, also known as Steinway, is an American and German manufacturer of handmade pianos, founded in 1853 in New York City, by German immigrant Heinrich Engelhard Steinweg (later Henry E. Steinway). The company's growth led to the opening of a factory and employee village in what is now Astoria, Queens in New York City, followed by a second factory in Hamburg, Germany, in 1880. Its early success has been credited both to the quality of its instruments and its effective marketing, including the company's introduction of Steinway Halls.

History

Foundation and growth

Heinrich Engelhard Steinweg, piano maker of the Steinweg brand, emigrated from Germany to America in 1850 with his wife and six of their seven children. The son Christian Friedrich Theodor Steinweg remained in Germany, and continued making the Steinweg brand of pianos. In 1853, Heinrich Engelhard Steinweg founded Steinway & Sons. His first workshop was in a small loft at the back of 85 Varick Street in Manhattan, New York City. The first piano produced by Steinway & Sons was given the number 483 because Steinweg had built 482 pianos in Germany before founding the company. Number 483 was sold to a New York family for $500, and is now displayed at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. A year later, demand was such that the company moved to larger premises at 82-88 Walker Street. It was not until 1864 that the family anglicized their name from "Steinweg" to "Steinway".

By the 1860s, Steinway had built a new factory and lumber yard. Now 350 men worked at Steinway, and production increased from 500 to 1,800 pianos per year. The pianos themselves underwent numerous substantial improvements through innovations made both at the Steinway factory and elsewhere in the industry, based on emerging engineering and scientific research, including developments in the understanding of acoustics. Almost half of the company's around 130 patented inventions were developed by the first and second generations of the Steinway family. Soon Steinway's pianos won several important prizes at exhibitions in New York City, Paris and London. By 1862, Steinways pianos had received more than 35 medals in USA alone.

In 1880, William Steinway established a professional community, Steinway Village, in the Astoria section of Queens County, New York. The Steinway Village was built as its own town, and included a new factory (still used today) with its own foundries, post office, parks and housing for employees. Steinway Village later became part of Long Island City. (Steinway Street, one of the major streets in the Astoria and Long Island City neighborhoods of Queens, is named after the company).

To reach European customers who wanted Steinway pianos, and to avoid high European taxes, William Steinway and Theodore Steinway established a new piano factory in the free German city of Hamburg in 1880. The first address of Steinway's factory in Germany was at Schanzenstrabe in the western part of Hamburg St. Pauli. Theodore Steinway became the head of the German factory, and William Steinway went back to the factory in New York. Despite the big distance between the factories in Hamburg and New York, they exchanged regularly experience about their patents and technique, which the factories still do today. More than a third of Steinway's patented inventions are under the name of Theodore Steinway.

Steinway Halls

Steinway Hall is the name of a building housing concert halls, showrooms and sales departments for Steinway pianos. In 1864, the son of Henry E. Steinway, William Steinway, who is credited with establishing Steinway's remarkable success in marketing, built a set of elegant new showrooms housing more than 100 pianos in East 14th Street in New York City. Two years later he oversaw the construction of Steinway Hall to the rear of the showrooms. The first Steinway Hall was opened in 1866. It seated more than 2,000 and quickly became an important part of New York's cultural life, housing the New York Philharmonic for the next 25 years, until Carnegie Hall opened in 1891. Concertgoers had to pass first through the piano showrooms, which had a remarkable effect on sales, increasing demand for new pianos by four hundred in 1867 alone. The Steinway factory was then in 4th Avenue (now Park Ave.) and East 55th Street in Manhattan. In 1880, a Steinway-Haus was established in Hamburg as a sales showroom with concert halls, practice studios, sales departments and piano storage space. In 1909, another Steinway-Haus opened in Berlin. A Steinway-Haus is similar to a Steinway Hall. Further promotional concepts developed by the company include Homes of Steinway, Steinway Galleries, Steinway Rooms and Steinway Salons. Today Steinway Halls and Steinway-Hauser are located in world cities such as New York City, London, Hamburg, Berlin, Vienna, Beijing, Tokyo, Seoul and Shanghai.

Expansion

By 1900, Steinway factories produced more than 3,500 pianos a year. In 1857 Steinway began to produce a line of highly lucrative art case pianos, designed by well-known artists. These pianos today command high prices in auctions around the world. In 1903 the 100,000th Steinway grand piano was given as a gift to the White House; it was decorated by the artists Thomas Wilmer Dewing and Maria Oakey Dewing under the supervision of the head of Steinway's Art Piano Department, Joseph Burr Tiffany. The 100,000th Steinway grand piano was replaced in 1938 by the 300,000th, which remains in use in the White House.

Later Steinway diversified into the manufacture of player pianos. Several systems such as the Welte-Mignon, Duo-Art, and Ampico were incorporated. In 1910, King Gustaf V of Sweden awarded a royal warrant to Steinway. During the 1920s Steinway had been selling up to 6,000 pianos a year. In 1929, Steinway constructed one double-keyboard grand piano. It had 164 keys and four pedals. (In 2005, Steinway refurbished this instrument). After 1929, piano production went down, and during the Great Depression, Steinway produced only a little more than 1,000 pianos per year. In the years between 1935 and World War II, demand rose again.

During WWII the Steinway factory in New York received orders from the Allied Armies to build wooden gliders to convey troops behind enemy lines. Few normal pianos could be made, but some 3000 special models were built, the Victory Vertical, or G.I. Piano. It was a small piano, able to be lifted by four men, painted olive drab, gray or blue, designed to be carried aboard ships or dropped by parachute from an airplane, in order to bring music to the soldiers.

The factory in Hamburg, Germany, being American-owned, could sell very few pianos during WWII. No more than a hundred pianos per year left the factory. In the later years of the war, the company was ordered to give away all the prepared and dried wood from the lumber yard, to be used for war production. In an air raid over Hamburg, the factory was hit by several Allied bombs and was nearly destroyed. After the war, Steinway completed the restoration of the Hamburg factory with some help from the Marshall Plan.

Eventually, the post-war cultural revival boosted demand for entertainment, and Steinway increased piano production at the New York and Hamburg factories, going from 2,000 in 1947 to 4,000 pianos a year by the 1960s. During the Cold War, Steinway pianos remained one of the very few products of the Western world purchased by the Soviet Union, and Steinway pianos were found at the Bolshoi Theatre, Moscow Philharmonic Orchestra, Moscow Conservatory, St. Petersburg Conservatory, and the St. Petersburg Philharmonic Orchestra, among other schools and symphony orchestras in the USSR.

Acquisitions

In 1972, after a long-running financial struggle, legal issues with the Grotrian-Steinweg brand, and a lack of business interest among some of the Steinway family members, the firm was sold to CBS. In 1985, CBS sold Steinway, along with Rodgers (classical organs) and Gemeinhardt (flutes and piccolos) to a group of investors: Steinway Musical Properties, Inc.

In 1987, Steinway made its 500,000th piano. The instrument was built largely by the Steinway factory in New York, with some participation from the Steinway factory in Hamburg. The 500,000th Steinway was designed by artist Wendell Castle and was named "Grand of the Artists". All the 800-plus Steinway Artists signed the piano with their names, including Vladimir Horowitz and Sir Elton John. The piano is taking an extended global concert tour.

In 1993, Steinway opened the C.F. Theodore Steinway Academy For Concert Technicians, also known as the Steinway Academy; the world's first academy for concert technicians worldwide. Georges Ammann, concert technician with Steinway's factory in Hamburg, said, "We were getting a lot of complaints from pianists all over the world - they said that getting their pianos tuned was a disastrous process every time and that the local technicians were hopeless. The artists kept begging us to do something about this ... From that perspective, it was clear that an institution like the Steinway Academy was a necessity." The Steinway Academy, in Steinway's factory in Hamburg, provides professional trained and certified concert technicians from around the world with a two-week intensive course. To participate the concert technicians must be experienced. It is difficult to become participant because of a high number of enrollment and a little number of course places. Concert technicians who pass the course get the right to call themselves "Steinway-trained concert technicians". It is related to prestige to be a Steinway-trained concert technician because of the high standard of the course and the reputation of Steinway.

In 1994, Steinway was invited to join the collaborative organization The Luxury Marketing Council Worldwide. Steinway is the only piano manufacturer which is a member. In 1995, Steinway Musical Properties, parent company of Steinway, merged with the Selmer Company to form Steinway Musical Instruments, which acquired the flute manufacturer Emerson in 1997, then piano keyboard maker Kluge in 1998, and the Steinway Hall in 1999. The conglomerate made more acquisitions in the following years. Since 1996, Steinway Musical Instruments has been traded at the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) under the abbreviation LVB, for Ludwig van Beethoven.

Recent history

By the year 2000, Steinway had made its 550,000th piano. The company updated and expanded production of its two other brands, Boston and Essex pianos, in addition to the flagship Steinway & Sons. More Steinway Halls, Steinway Houses, Homes of Steinway, Steinway Galleries and Steinway Salons opened across the world, mainly in Japan, Korea and China.

In 2003, Steinway celebrated its 150th anniversary at Carnegie Hall's largest auditorium, Isaac Stern Auditorium, with a gala series of three concerts on June 5, 6 and 7, 2003. The concert on June 5 featured classical music with Kit Armstrong (a music child prodigy), Van Cliburn, Eroica Trio, Gary Graffman, Ben Heppner, Yundi Li and Guher and Suher Pekinel. The host was Charles Osgood. On June 6 was a concert of jazz featuring Peter Cincotti, Herbie Hancock, Ahmad Jamal, Al Jarreau, Ramsey Lewis, Tisziji Munoz, Chucho Valdes and Nancy Wilson, hosted by Billy Taylor. Pop music was the focus of June 7, with Paul Shaffer hosting performances by Art Garfunkel, Bruce Hornsby, k.d. lang, Michel Legrand, Brian McKnight, Peter Nero and Roger Williams. As part of the 150th anniversary, renowned international fashion designer Karl Lagerfeld created a commemorative Steinway art case piano.

In April 2005, Steinway celebrated the 125th anniversary of the establishment of Steinway's factory in Hamburg, Germany. Steinway employees, together with artists, dealers and friends from around the world celebrated the anniversary at the Laeiszhalle (former Music Hall Hamburg) with a gala concert, culminating in a showcase performance by the Steinway Artists Lang Lang, Vladimir and Vovka Ashkenazy and Detlef Kraus. As part of the celebration, the 125th anniversary limited edition Steinway art case piano by renowned designer Count Albrecht von Goertz was presented to the public.

On May 19, 2008 Steinway announced the acquisition of ArkivMusic, an online retailer which operates the website ArkivMusic.com. This website is devoted to sales of classical music on the Internet, direct to the consumer. Service delivery of physical media (CDs, DVDs, SACDs and DVD-Audios) is fulfilled from 20 distribution centers. There are currently more than 90,000 titles from more than 1,500 labels in the ArkivMusic database. Under Steinway, ArkivMusic will continue to operate independently, but will consolidate its finances with other Steinway businesses.

Until his death on September 18, 2008 at the age of 93, Henry Z. Steinway, the great-grandson of the Steinway founder, still worked for Steinway and put his signature on custom-made limited edition pianos. At several public occasions, Henry Z. Steinway represented the Steinway family. Henry Z. Steinway was the last Steinway family president.

On January 24, 2009 Steinway installed the world's largest solar-powered rooftop air-conditioning and dehumidification system, at a cost of $875,000, to dehumidify the factory in New York, and protect the pianos. Lower humidity in the factory provides a more stable environment, with no moisture to threaten the construction of the pianos. The massive HVAC system will function as a beta test site for solar technology in the Tri-State Region.

Taken from Wikipedia

General list of world-renowned piano brands: