Steinway & Sons
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Steinway & Sons is a piano manufacturing firm, currently based in New York and Hamburg, Germany. Steinway pianos are undoubtedly the most famous pianos in the world, popularly known as "The Instrument of the Immortals", due to the devotion to the Steinway by many legendary pianists and composers.
The firm was founded in 1839 in Seesen, Germany by Heinrich Engelhard Steinweg, who emigrated to America in 1851 and changed his surname to Steinway. By the 1860s they were the leading piano manufacturer in America. The innovations introduced by Steinway, including the cast iron frame and overstringing, have become a model for other piano manufacturers worldwide.
In 1866, Henry Steinway built Steinway Hall on 14th Street in New York City. It housed the firm's offices and showrooms on the first floor, and a large auditorium on the second floor which became a center of culture and music.
In 1880, Henry Steinway's son William Steinway established a company town, Steinway, Queens Co., New York, which later became part of Astoria, Queens, New York, in the borough of Queens and built piano factories and worker housing there.
Their success is reflected by their presence on the most prestigious concert stages in the world. Steinway was for a time nearly the exclusive provider of high-end pianos. Their production now has been outnumbered by other firms such as Yamaha and Kawai, with each brand having its loyalists. At the top of their success in the 1920s they sold more than 6,000 pianos a year. Steinway's long established reputation and hand-crafting, particularly for those produced in Hamburg, set them apart from others.
After long financial woes the firm was finally sold to CBS in 1972. CBS sold Steinway to Steinway Musical Properties, Inc. which finally sold it to Selmer in 1995. Only one member of the Steinway family currently still works for Steinway.
Most pianists have a preference for either Hamburg-built Steinways or New York Steinways. Whilst the differences are preferential and not qualitative, each has its loyalists. Influential artists such as the late Vladimir Horowitz insisted on the New York Steinway, with its clearer, and more penetrating timbre, whereas others, including Marc-André Hamelin, Alfred Brendel and Arcadi Volodos, prefer the Hamburg Steinway for its more mellow, rich, warm tone. The differences in tone are determined by the quality of the construction, as well as piano's hammer manufacture (the New York Steinway uses considerably softer felt hammers (using a Texas-Australian composite) than their Hamburg counterparts). Despite the insistence by the Steinway management that there is no difference between the two, there are substantial differences in the manufacturing process and the skill level in the labour, resulting in dramatic differences between them.
Covered in the Harvard Business School case 9-500-028.
Official Website
Steinway & Sons (http://www.steinway.com)
External Links
Steinway & Sons Collection at the La Guardia and Wagner Archives in New York (http://www.steinway.lagcc.cuny.edu)
Trivia
The Hyperion Cantos, set in a distant future, mention the Steinway as being one of the mythical music instruments, along with Stradivarius violins.