Hey guys,
I just want to see what everybody thinks about Fazioli Pianos?

Here: http://www.pianoworld.com/forum/ubbthrea...html#Post908949

I posted that 7+ years ago; not sure if anything has significantly changed with Fazioli since.

Fazioli is among several of the finest pianos in the world today. It has a rather distinctive sound that has fans among those who are looking for that sound.

The same can be said of the other top-rated instruments.

Makes me want spaghetti.

They are beautiful pianos with a very clean, cool and clinical sound, a bit too much in that direction for my taste, which runs towards a warmer and more colorful tonal palette.

I would have to agree with sophial. I’ve had the opportunity to play on a couple higher-end Fazioli Concert Grands and, while I found them to have incredible action and touch with the sound being extremely bright, clear and crisp, I also have to admit that, when compared to some of the others I played, the Fazioli was very ‘clinical’. The sound was very loud and clear, with each note being easy to single out. However, it was a little too clear. It seemed to lack warmth and depth. Don’t get me wrong, they are beautiful pianos, and they definitely make amazing performance pianos, but my taste ran more to the warmer and more ‘blended’ sound of the C. Bechstein I was comparing it to.

Still, if I had $170,000 to drop on a piano, the ones I played would definitely be contenders!

What can I say...great pianos !

I had a couple of opportunities to play Fazioli including a concert grand. My impression was a bit of a let down. Maybe I went into it with over-expectations? The sound is very clean, bright, cold, with nice resonances. I really like clean and bright sound, but didn't care for cool palette. Nevertheless, I have a lot of respect for small companies dedicated to absolute quality in today's global-economic mass production world. As far as I know, they are still independently owned, and hopefully will stay that way.

+1
But if someone wanted to give me one for my birthday I wouldn't say no!

I pretty much agree with the above assessments, though my experience with Faziolis is limited. I've only played a few brand-new showroom models.

I do wonder if they change at all once they are played in for a few years, the way many other pianos do. I wonder how they develop tonally.

Yamaha on steroids.

If one listens to Daniil Trifonov playing a Fazioli on some of his YouTube recordings, I think most of the above criticisms disappear very quickly. I think it's very significant that one of the greatest young pianists on the planet sometimes chooses to play a Fazioli.

I was actually privileged enough to play on one for a music festival in Italy. I actually played an F308 with orchestra performing Saint-Saen's 2nd Piano Concerto. What a magical experience. That piano has a remarkable action and incredible power when called upon. I feel that playing it is like painting on a blank canvas. You must decide everything that will come out of the instrument. I see most other pianos as imparting a sort of pre-shading to the tone that I may or may not like depending on what I'm playing.

Long story short, I would buy one in a heartbeat over almost everything if I could afford it

I've only played one bad one. That was years ago at the Colburn School in Zipper Hall. It sounded overly bright and just bad. Whoever was taking care of the pianos at that time was doing a pretty bad job...

The tone of the Fazioli makes me think of the Stonetone pianos. These are pianos that have been modified by using a bridge made of solid granite (solid rock).

Here is a Story and Clark that has had this modification done. (Poor man's Fazioli?)

I had a chance to play a number of Faziolis. I'd agree with many of the comments. The build quality and action is superb and the consistency between pianos is quite remarkable. As pointed out they are prepped so they are very clear and the treble in my mind is often too bright. Of the models I prefer the 278 to the 308, the 278 seems to hang together better and from the ones I've played it seemed like it had more power and colour. I've liked a number of the 218s I've played, especially if they've received some local service work to balance the wonderful bass with a richer treble. While the pianos are all prepped in a very specific way, it appears as if they can be prepped across a wide spectrum. As many have stated, they wouldn't be my first choice - but I wouldn't complain if someone wanted to gift one to me :-).

Not to me. I tuned a 308 and a CFIIIs the same afternoon once, and I preferred the Yamaha. The Fazioli had a nice action, though.

I should have said Yamaha C series on steroids.

Among concert grands, I've probably played the Fazioli F278 more than any other, and it's second only to the Bösendorfer Imperial 290 in my estimation (though they're very different beasts), in terms of what it feels like to play, its responsiveness to touch and basically, what I can do with it. However I've never had the chance to play the F308.

Steinway D has its own coloration and character which is almost ubiquitous because most concert pianists play it, but I prefer the Fazioli's purer tone with its stronger fundamentals; however, it's easy to understand that people brought up on the Steinway sound may find the Fazioli's relative lack of 'built-in color' somewhat disappointing. But listen to a great pianist play it and you'll see what it can do. Nikolai Demidenko recorded his first Bach/Busoni CD on Steinway D and his second on Fazioli F278 for Hyperion: listen to both and you'll understand why he changed piano for the later recording......

Off Topic, but here is the exact same model of Story & Clark, no Stonetone, with a moderate effort at prep. Had we recorded more low bass, the recording would have revealed more limitations of this piano, but I think it does show that it is hard to demonstrate a single "feature" on any machine as complicated as a piano.

Funny, I see these videos and hear a big difference in terms of the sustain, even taking into account the clearly different acoustics of the spaces and methods of recording.

I think the videos present an interesting comparison, since in both videos the performers are 'milking' the sustain of the pianos. But I do perceive the tone on the piano with the standard bridge to have less body and sustain.

The Stonetone pianos have a demonstration video where two Baldwins of the same model are played in the same room -- one with the Stonetone bridge and the other without.

There was a thread a while back (I'm too lazy to find it) where the stone bridge was discussed. In that thread, I was on the side of people who were skeptical about the stone bridge because of some apparent implications of physics for this kind of bridge. The mass of the granite is obviously much greater than wood. This would seem to suggest that the sustain will be longer, but at the expense of initial sound volume (the energy in the string can't dissipate into sound as quickly because it has to move a heavier mass).

However, the videos have stuck in my memory because the tone seems to me to be compelling for a certain taste. And the attack doesn't seem to be weak, as the assumptions I just mentioned would suggest. So I think the assumptions based on those physical factors I mentioned might be leaving some factor out.

It makes me wonder about the design and construction used by Fazioli in their bridges.

Has anyone experienced F308 Model? How do you feel when you play a big composition? Rachmaninov, Tchaikovsky etc...

I've played the 308 in Chicago at Pianoforte Chicago. It is a most remarkable piano. It is quieter than some of the 9 foot neighbors in the same showroom, but can of course project considerable volume (without straining the ears) if you desire. The most amazing thing was the action, which on all Faziolis are highly responsive, but I have never played such an action where all the bass notes are as easy to play as the treble notes. It seems Fazioli has completely eliminated the issue of weight in these notes. I imagine it would be easy to play all the Chopin-Godowsky etudes on this piano, including the ones where Godowsky puts the difficult technical passages in the left hand.

The tone on all Faziolis coming out of the factory in Sacile is carefully regulated and each piano must pass a personal test by Paolo Fazioli. In that respect, the tone he prefers emphasizes the fundamental of each note, which some people will describe as clinical or cold. The piano does not need to sound that way when it sits in your home. Any decent technician can work with the hammers and voice them to emphasize more of the harmonics. Second, there is a screw/bolt that can be adjusted which changes the pressure on the soundboard (I think I'm describing this accurately). This alters the tone and it might be an illusion, but the volume coming from the piano seems to change as well. Third, the aliquots are all moveable, and Paolo provides the technicians with a tool that makes it easy to adjust these. You can make sure that the harmonics coming from this section of the string are pure, or if you wish you can muddy them slightly by having them a bit off key (a slightly high or low fifth, for example).

Paolo - who is an amazing combination of entrepreneur, inventor, scientist, artist, and gentleman - is constantly changing and enhancing his instruments. The fourth pedal on the 308 has a new feature that allows you to shift it slightly and lock it in; tap it again and it releases the pedal. The half-blow feature can therefore be locked, leaving your foot to use the una corda or sostenuto for further tonal possibilities. Paolo did not invent the locked pedal mechanism - it's been around for a very long time on other pianos.

My F228 is over twenty years old and the soundboard is beginning to blossom in some wonderful ways. The tone is getting richer without the loss of clarity that characterizes the Fazioli. Since the wood in the soundboard is from the same trees used for many centuries by Italian luthiers such as Stradivarius, I am hoping that over the next 100 - 200 years the soundboard will continue to evolve as it has done in violins and cellos. That will be for my descendants to enjoy.

Ohh noo... It is common knowledge to "all-american" (TM) pianomakers ( ;-)) sorry ma pals..) that soundboard wood will not last any longer than 30 yrs.. oops. .. was it 50 yrs?
;-)

Whenever you go to Steinway to let them restore your old Steinway grand and it is older than 1980, they will extract the old soundboard and install a new one..

= = =

I own a S&S concert grand (age 135 yrs) with original soundboard. Once it had some six gaps.. It was then refurbished in a "european manner" by v-cutting and glueing-in wooden strips. But this soundboard once was made from Appalachian white spruce, a material which was no longer available after the 1920ies..

The saga of the forests in the Val di Fiemme and the Strad sound wood also was corrected partially. The old Italians partly bought wood from the people of Venice who once got it from the mountaon ranges of the peninsula Istria, now Slovenia and Croatia. Then the wood was stored in water bassins (ca. three years) where anaerobic mushrooms and bacteria cracked nearly all woodden fibre glue. Then the wood was sold to the violin makers. They themselves stored the wood again and let it dry.

It was the lightest and best spruce sound wood ever and is it still today. Lowest specific weight you can find of any needle wood!

The preparation method by letting the wood rot and let the fibre glue be dissolved by anaerobic bacteria was (re-) explored by a swiss man some years before - now it is knowledge of some ultra-high class violin makers of today who again sell violins of extraordinary craftmanship (five figure prices, one or two figures lower than an ancient Strad..) - and with extraordinary light ultra-high class sound wood.

Sometimes I dream of an experts work to produce a soundboard by these violinmaker new-old methods and with wood from Istria, three years stored in a water bassin..

My 0.02 EURO cents

=== completely OT of Fazioli and wood.. ===

BTW I ordered to refurbish a light set of old Steinway hammers fom the 1930ies (with this remarkable grey felt on the base of the hammer). The set also was most probably extracted (like the soundboards) at the factory, it once was a victim of Vertigris.. copper corrosion at the wires. But hammers of nice state and shape - light..

We built in by a test run three of these ancient hammersm to compare the sound with the neighbpourin tones - and it was a "hammer hard" astonishment for both of us, me & the very experienced tech: what a blooming sound! absolutely NO comparison to the freshly installed (2.5 yrs before) hammers of this thick high-density felt and broad, heavy hammer heads for actual D size grands..

The old set formely had Vertigris, (no: has still..) but it will be re-fitted with new wires and felt bearings, the hammers will be slightly shaped.

It will be a delayed Christmas gift for me when the piano technician (a Bosendorfer apprentice and 40 yrs experienced technician) will come and install this set in March or April.

I will report afterwards.

Sorry Numerian for having "piratized" the thread..
;-)

Interesting.

Always thought there was more 'saga'than truth to the matter.

For example many violin makers have experimented around in the past with Val di Fiemme Ciresa spruce without getting anywhere close to the sound of Stradivarius.

Swiss research has meantime proven that the special wood used for Stradivarius had less to do with any one particular type wood but the influence of fungi [mushrooms] grown at a time of rather unique metereological conditions during same era.

http://www.aponet.de/aktuelles/kurioses/2012-09-pilz-laesst-geige-wie-stradivari-klingen.html

We once had an Estonia grand made using same Ciresa wood in soundboard - hardly any difference.

Except 'price'...



Norbert

There's magic in the mushrooms!

No, no - our Estonia was 'clean'

Norbert

I am always puzzled when PW posters severely criticize really high-end Tier 1 pianos that often are priced in the six figures. Can they really be that bad? I know every pianist has his own preferences for type of tone or touch, and that is fine, but some posters talk down some really extraordinary pianos like they are junk. Are they just snobs? I can't imagine that a Fazioli piano couldn't be voiced to please almost any performer. Maybe I am naive, but I would take one if they were inexpensive. I just don't have that kind of money. Don't get me wrong, I love my Mason-Hamlin BB and have no plans to ever replace it. But a Fazioli in the same size would be incredibly expensive in comparison!

I loved the story of the 1930s Steinway hammers. Maybe Steinway should start experimenting with verdigris on their hammers. Or maybe it's the fact that the felt is 80 years old.

The Frederick Collection has many pianos over 100 years old with what appear to be original soundboards. They seem to be functioning quite well with very distinctive tonal properties. Of course, the consensus is that soundboards lose their crowns after 50 years or so and turn dead, assuming they could avoid cracks. Is the consensus wrong? Are there some fantastic Steinways or Mason & Hamlins from the 1920s still in use? That would give us better reason to think Faziolis could last as long too.

Interesting how we went from Fazioli to dealers sneaking in plugs for Story & Clark and Estonia. We even got in a little dig at Steinway. This may be the perfect PW thread!

And BTW, I thought Sam's Story & Clark sounded pretty nice.