Buying and Work to Get Delivery[/b]
After enjoying an evening on the beach at Melbourne, we drove back to Orlando and checked into a hotel for the night. Early the next morning we turned in our rental car and caught an early flight to St. Louis, MO. We were on our way to buy a piano in St. Louis that we have not told about! A Grotrian Rococo that my husband found at an internet Superstore.




NOT! (He thought that'd be funny to say because of some comments that have been made. Oh well...)

So no, we were just flying back to Dallas. Once in Dallas we went to a Mother's Day dinner with our families where we shared the news and pictures of the piano. Afterwards we hurried out to the piano owner's home and arranged the details of the bill of sale. Mission accomplished!

On Monday my husband begin working with Mr. Kahn over the telephone, on how the touch up work on the Feurich would be done. The problem was that the trim pieces were of a different wood than the veneer case and they had taken the stain differently during the manufacturing process. After staining the pianos was coated with several coats of clear polyester finish and then polished. The piano had been in the living room of a house on a lake with lots of windows and UV rays fading the finish for 20 years. The veneer was only lightly faded and very beautiful in the lighter shade. The trim pieces had faded much more and this made the piano look strange.


Mr. Kahn, who had been involved in the manufacture and rebuilding of fine pianos all of his life, believed that he could brush on colored touch up lacquer over the trim only and then coat these pieces with new polyester clear coat. This made sense to my husband but he wanted a second opinion. So he emailed Mr. Julius Feurich in Germany at the Feurich factory. Mr. Feurich responded promptly and very nicely at length. He suggested that we ship the piano back to him in Germany and he would laboriously remove the polyester finish and then refinish the piano as if it was new. The finishing process is a 12 step process. He suggested that "since we had such a fine piano, it was worth the very large expense!" He has just completed refinishing a Feurich piano like this which was damaged by water in the New Orleans hurricane and flood. (I wonder how many months that has taken.) If we decided on that course of repair, we would finish this adventure story next year when I finally got to play it.!!!
But my husband decided to go ahead and ask Mr. Kahn to touch up all of the trim in lacquer and polyester clear coat as he suggested. It only took 4 days to get the colored lacquer from a specialty dealer and finish the piano. Mr. Kahn also regulated and tuned the piano.

On Friday my new 6'4" Feurich Rococo Grand Piano was delivered. In two or three weeks his special tech will come and again tune and revoice the piano in our home. He wanted to wait until I had played it a lot to see how much the 25 year old hammers change with playing. They may get softer with being played regularly. Currently the hammers look like new, as the piano has barely been played over the years, but age has hardened them.

So this is my new Grand piano!

Since Chris Vienna asked for high resolution pictures, these are links to these same pictures only in higher resolution.
http://www.pianoworld.com/Uploads/files/Feurichme.jpg

http://www.pianoworld.com/Uploads/files/Feurichplayed1.jpg

And here are links to two more pictures in high resolution:
http://www.pianoworld.com/Uploads/files/FeurichHR.jpg
http://www.pianoworld.com/Uploads/files/FeurichHR2.jpg

Congratulations on your new piano-- as you said it's fit for a castle and very lovely ! I hope you have many happy years making music with it. I have to admit, I thought you were going for the ebony Feurich or a Bosendorfer... but this one seemed to have captured your heart and imagination.
best wishes,

Sophia

These are more pictures of my Feurich Rococo which was made in Germany in 1982 by the Julius Feurich family.

And check back again for three more days as we have two or three more chapters to write! This adventure is not quite over. Thanks for reading and sharing it with us.






These keys are made of Ivory. They are each of one piece. On most pianos with ivory keys each top is made from two parts, the head and the tail. Another neat thing is that the black keys are made from real ebony wood, not painted black.

Beautiful piano! I love seeing reflections on the wood and the full size ivory keys are great. I forgot now what you said about how it sounds. You'll have to summarize...

If only it were possible to just touch it across the internet....

It is beautiful!!!

I'm so thrilled for you and so envious (in a good way of course.)

Indeed a wonderful blessing and a wonderful gift from your husband.

Do you think he'd help me find one now??? lol - just kidding. We're looking in a market much much lower than what I'm sure you spent!

THAT - is a beautiful piano!

Congratulations Jordang.
Enjoy!
Thanks for the story too. It sounds like the journey was as much fun as the destination.

Mike

Gorgeous

Congratulations. What a beautiful piano. I will miss checking your post every morning.

Beautiful piano and a great end to the story! Please post a follow up in a month or so and let us know how it sounds after being played for a while.

Congratulations!

Stunning! I will eventually have a Louis XV too. I love the style and we have a number of other French pieces in our home.

Enjoy!

beautiful! congratulations!

i like the twist about the grotian over the internet.

I realize Jordang there is more however I need to tell you I so admire your lack of impulse control and I think that really speaks to your relationship as well as yourself. You had a faith that there was going to be no pressure. I am so impressed that you could be joined in your search so completely by your husband. What a lovely journey and something that is more precious than the piano itself. Congratulations you certainly are one lucky woman

Wow! I never seen a piano like that. That is very stylish.

Congrats

After all the mention of prices, you never mentioned how much you ended paying for this.

$$$???

Wow!!! The piano I just bought is like an old volkswagon beetle compared to that one. Solid but obviously not on the same scale. That piano is beautiful and all class as are you and your husband.

Congratulations on your new piano.
Thank you for sharing your shopping adventure.
Very nicely documented.
Hope you and your family enjoy the new instrument for many years to come.

Maybe we can meet sometime.I live in Keller (DFW) just NE of Fort Worth.

Formal Elegance.

I have never experienced an Feurich.

Next, you will need to purchase a ZOOM H4 (check the several pages of posts) for about $270 and make some recordings for us.

;-)

BTW, can we clone your husband?

LL

Great story! Not the instrument I thought you would go for, but obviously a stunning piano nonetheless. I particularly enjoyed all the pics. Thanks.

It would be good to hear some recordings....

That piano is truly beautiful. Congratulations and enjoy your gift.

Postlude[/b]
Why did I choose the Feurich? I will attempt to put into words a description that may possibly relate to you what I heard and felt when I played this piano. While in Atlantic Music Center in Florida I was able to compare the various brands and builds of the pianos. I played excerpts of the same music on each one, moving quickly from one to another. This enabled us to hear the differences in the pianos. Their ebony Feurich had a very rich basso profondo, powerful and bold.

As I play my piano the bass is wonderful even in comparing to the best concert grands on CDs, the high treble tones are very clear and bell like, and the middle keys sound bright and well balanced. There is good sustentation of the tones, also, and the piano sings beautifully. I detect no changes in the sound as the string types change. I thought then and also now that the piano responds so well to my touch and I am able to produce the sounds and interpret the music the way I desire.

Then as I considered the cases, both the Feurich in Florida and the one in Dallas were very nice. However, the lovely walnut case of the Rococo Feruich was the one my eyes and emotions loved the most. In the end the Rococo Feurich had more of everything I wanted than any other piano.... sound, action responsiveness, beauty, and price.
All of our hard work and shopping really paid off.[/b]

And yes, the adventure of the search was wonderful, exciting fun and allowed us to work together in wonderful new ways.

When the piano was placed on the hardwood floor in our house, that particular flooring made the sound seem almost too bright; so we put carpet under it (as you see it in the pictures). As I practice on it more and more, breaking in the hammers, the sound is indeed changing subtlety. It will be fun working with the technician when he returns to tweek the voicing until it is just right.

We are eager to have a new keyboard made, with smaller sized keys, by David Steinbuhler of www.Steinbuhler.com . We will remove the keyboard and action and ship them to him in a box which he will provide. He then makes many measurements and enters them into a computer which designs a new smaller keyboard to be a perfect fit for my piano. He then uses computer guided milling machines, which he normally uses to make textile machine parts, and creates a new custom keyboard. He can put a new Renner action stack on his keyboard or reuse most of the parts from my current action stack. Some people want two complete keyboards and actions so than in about 15 minutes then can change between them.

I am saddened that I will have to put my beautiful keyboard with ivory and real ebony keys into the closet, but if I or someone ever wants to use regular size keys it will be easy to change. The local techs have agreed to regulate, voice, tune or whatever we need when the transition takes place. I also think it will be very beneficial for children learning to play the piano. I plan to teach piano again someday. After a summer of loving my piano, and school restarts, we will send the keyboard off for measurement and then onward to an even finer piano.

More about the Steinbuhler Reduced Size Keyboards:[/b]
David Steinbuhler will put wider wood blocks on each side of the smaller keyboard so that it looks fit for the piano. Then he will ship the two keyboards back to me to have a local piano tech regulate and voice the piano with the new keyboard. During this process I will be faced with the hard choices of how I want to improve the current state of the piano. Do I want different hammers to have a little different sound? Do I want to change the touch weight to be lighter or harder? Do I want it regulated to change the balance of the voicing of the piano? These will be challenging questions for me as I have never approached such questions before. We have been learning about different hammers and touch weight and voicing and piano design balance as we have been on this learning adventure. Now we will be working with two local RPT (a husband and wife team) to learn more and make decisions.

Why am I changing the keyboard? I have small hands and have always had to roll the large full chords and jump to reach distant intervals. In his piano research, my husband discovered an article from the University of North Texas about students giving concerts on a smaller Steinbuhler keyboard. He became excited about this because he had heard me complain about how my small hands limited me. He shared this new information with me and I also became excited. We learned that Southern Methodist University, as well as other universities including Texas Tech and University of Nebraska at Lincoln, have been conducting research for a few years on how using smaller keyboards for students and professors with smaller hands have resulted in fewer injuries and discomfort for them.

To read this research:
Http://www.steinbuhler.com/html/our_research.html
Http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1002&context=musicpresentations
This is an article in Wikepedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musical_keyboard

I contacted a piano professor at SMU and arranged to go and try the Steinbuhler keyboard that she has on her Steinway in her studio. She was very helpful in talking with us and letting me spend as much time as I wanted playing her Steinbuhler keyboard. I found that it did take some adjustment. When I first put my hands on the keyboard to play an octave, she warned me to look down. The span that I use to play an octave was now about to produce a ninth. She explained to us that it normally takes her students 30 minutes or so to adjust so that they don't miss notes. I found that I did adjust in about that length of time. I had to watch the keyboard more at first, but it was not as difficult as I had thought it might be. The professor also said that she takes her Steinbuhler keyboard with her when she performs in various concert halls on Steinways Concert Pianos size D; and has learned to have it set up in by a tech in about 4 hours. Because I am now playing for my own personal enjoyment and for my friends and family who ask me to play something for them, I want to be able to tackle music that had been too difficult for me 30 years ago. My former piano professor, who I talked with about buying a new piano as we began our search, cautioned me that it would mess me up to practice on a smaller (7/8 size) keyboard, then perform on a regular size one. I tried to explain to him that my performing days are most probably passed, so I don't anticipate having to learn something at home then perform it elsewhere. If I do play something for church, I can always practice on my Yamaha, or switch the keyboards back.

When we were telling Brian Gotchell of Atlantic Music about the smaller keyboards, he told us that Steinway had made custom smaller keyboards for the great pianist Josef Hoffman. We then bought books about this famous pianist and also read about this. Hoffman was great on regular sized keyboards, but with his small hands (small for a man) he was even greater on a reduced keyboard. We have also heard that Bosendorfer made reduced size keyboard pianos for a famous woman pianist, but we have not yet learned her name.

By the way, Beethoven Pianos in NYC is selling Steinbuhler keyboards. Kraig made the comment that he would like for piano makers to put these in their pianos because there are more and more teachers who want them for their students. Charles Walters is the first to agree to put them in their pianos, verticial and grands.
Http://www.beethovenpianos.com/tuning6.php

Article by Dr, Carol Leon of SMU
Http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m2493/is_6_52/ai_n6090014

Website of pianist Christopher Donison
Http://www.musicbythesea.ca/keyboard.html

Congratulations, Jordang! It's always nice to hear when people have found the piano of their dreams.

Please do update us as after you get the reduced keyboard in and give us your impressions and a photo or two.

Jordang,

Congratulations on your new piano! I've been following your piano journey since you started, and I'm so happy you find your instrument.

In regards to your smaller keyboard. This is interesting to me because I play early keyboard instruments where the keys are normally smaller, or about the size that your new keyboard will be.

It's interesting to note that the keyboards had keys that were once much wider than they are today, and actually varied quite a bit between instrument manufacturers and the country that the instruments came from.

The harpischord keyboard became narrower when the French builders started a renovating (a ravelment) process on older instruments. In order to fit the larger range into the smaller case, the keys had to be made thinner to make up the difference.

This thin-key size then become the norm on harpsichords after that, and later on the early pianos. So if you ever decide to play a harpsichord, or a fortepiano, you won't have any trouble getting used to it because the keys will be the right size for you!

John

Interesting. Thanks for the info.

ENCORE[/b]

In our travels to many piano stores we met many wonderful piano
salespersons who treated us so nice and had such professional
knowledge. Several were of such personal character that they were very
nice to really help us, even when they knew that they did not have the piano
that we were looking for and they would make no sale to us. We really
thank them.

One man we met who was in this very professional category and he also was
the most interesting man we met. He talked with a slight foreign accent
and had an amazing command of piano knowledge which he shared generously
from. He was a man in his mid 50's who had spent his entire life in the
piano business as his parents were the owners of a large piano factory
in South Africa. He had spent his life traveling the world building his
family's piano business while building his own store in Texas.

We thought that several people who frequent this forum would like to
meet him. Of course many people here already know him and we thought they
might like to know how he is doing.

We are speaking of Mr. Ivan Kahn of Encore Pianos in Dallas, part of the
Kahn's Pianos Group.

We were amazed to learn of his education. He has four
college degrees, including Business and a Doctorate of Law. As a young man he
wanted to get out of the family business of pianos which began with his grandfather
in Germany in 1886. (His grandfather and a friend formed the Bernhard
Steiner Piano company, which moved to South Africa in 1903. Their
company worked with several companies around the world making and buying
pianos from each other, including Ibach, Sauter, Dietmann, Knight, Ajello,
Otto Bach, Kawai, SamIck, and others). But Ivan decided he did not like lawyers,
and he enjoyed the people in the piano business much better. In 1978 he and his
wife, Lesley, immigrated to the US to build the Bernhard Steiner wholesale business
and to start a piano store in Dallas selling some the finest brands from around
the world. They have raised three daughters who have continued the family tradition
of earning college degrees, (but not building and selling pianos). (Ivan's
wife has degrees in Math and Physics.)

He has long traveled the world dealing with the piano factories,
building dealers, selling pianos at home, rebuilding pianos, and raising
a family. When he left S. Africa in 1978 he was not allowed to bring
any money with him. But he could bring new and used pianos. (Big
baggage.) So he brought many old German pianos which he rebuilt in
Dallas to sell at a profit. He opened a store to sell the rebuilt
pianos, Bernhard Steiners from S. Africa, pianos from Europe and Korea
with the family names on them, and other famous German pianos.
Now with the many changes in the piano business, his business inventory
got to be too great and his sales too little and he almost lost his
business. He is in the process of restarting the business at a new
location in Dallas on Midway Road. Currently, most of his business is
rebuilding (which he loves) American grands and selling the best Chinese
pianos he can find, some of which carry the Bernhard Steiner and Dietmann
names.

Bernhard Steiner Piano Brand History[/b]

I am going to share just a brief retelling of the long story Ivan told us. If you want to know more about the details of the pianos which I mention below, just call him at his store with the model number and he can fill in all of the other information.

Bernhard Kahn and Hans Steiner started their piano company in Germany in 1886, and moved the factory to S. Africa in 1903. The world wars so damaged the piano factories in Germany and England that companies often contracted with the S. African company to build pianos for them. They built pianos in co-operation with Gors & Kallman, Ibach, Sauter, Dietmann, and other German companies and Knight and Ajello companies
of England. By the 1960's they stopped making their own grand pianos and moved the production of the main line of Bernhard Steiner grands to the Kawai factory in Hamamatsu, Japan. Ivan's father Billy (Bernard)and his mother Pearl, often visited Japan and Ivan smiles when he recalls that his mom, Pearl, was one of the first non military European women to visit Hamamatsu after the war, staying in what was then called the Grand Hotel, a "Western Style" hotel with Tatami mats as beds!.

In the meantime they continued the full production of verticals and also professional studio pianos from parts manufactured by Kawai and the German company, Sauter. Sauter also manufactured a German version of the Bernhard Steiner grand which was sold in Europe and South Africa. A few of these beautiful, but expensive pianos, found their way to the USA through Ivan's Dallas store.

In the early 1970's, Billy forged an alliance with Young Chang in Korea, and many Bernhard Steiner pianos, designed by the Kahns, were produced by Young Chang. By 1980, Samick of Korea was producing the Bernhard Steiner pianos for the American marketplace. These were sold by Ivan in Dallas, alongside their South African produced pianos, and throughout the USA.

Uprights were made in S. Africa until 1996, From that time, all the Bernhard Steiners sold in the USA were manufactured by Samick. Mr. Kahn worked with Samick, changing scales and including many European parts,such as hammers, on the Bernhard Steiner pianos. These "improved" pianos later
evolved into the very successful "World Series" line of pianos distributed by Samick America.

In recent years, arrangements have been made to move production of Bernhard Steiner and Dietmann pianos to Chinese manufactures, including Hailun of China.

If you want to know more about any of these pianos, Ivan Kahn can be reached at 972-233-2014 or ivan.kahn@encore-pianos.com.

What a wonderful story! Your musical journey with this piano is just beginning...may you experience the ultimate joy of playing the piano! Best wishes and many happy years with a beautiful instrument!

- Mark
-----------------------------------------------------------
...The ultimate joy in music is the joy of playing the piano...

Telephone call from Julius Feurich[/b]
A very wonderful thing happened yesterday.

We have also learned that there are many unexpected advantages from buying a hand made piano from a small manufacture...

I have enjoyed reading your story.

Wow! What a treat to get to speak to the owner of the company that made your piano personally. I bet your jaw just dropped open when you answered the phone and discovered who was on the other end.

Well not quite. Brian had talked to my husband the day before and arranged the Saturday morning telephone call. My husband was so excited that he spilled the beans to me the night before. I knew he would call sometime and I had time to think about what I was going to say. I was still terribly excited as you imagine. So was my husband, he had to tell several friends about it.