Steinway Hall
Steinway Hall is the name given to the buildings operated by Steinway & Sons , which are usually a combination of concert hall, demonstration and sales rooms. In Germany and Austria these buildings are called the Steinway House .
new York
14th Street
The first Steinway Hall was built on 14th Street in Manhattan in 1866 and was considered one of the first concert halls in New York . William Steinway , commercial director and a marketing genius , had transferred the idea of successful concert halls for piano manufacturers from Europe ( Salle Pleyel in Paris , the Bösendorfer Hall in Vienna ) and expanded it for the purposes of a sales exhibition - this element was new and an invention of William Steinway : to let the concert-goers walk past exhibited pianos. Four days after the Academy of Music burned to the ground on 14th Street on May 22, 1866, William Steinway laid the foundation stone for the building. The four floors of the building provided enough space for exhibition rooms with over 100 grand pianos and upright pianos, the concert hall and rooms for piano lessons. The halls and rooms were illuminated with over 700 gas lights. On the ground floor there were offices and sales rooms, as well as the offices of the family managers immediately to the left of the entrance, above the concert hall. With 2,500 seats, it was the largest concert hall in the city for 25 years and soon became one of the leading centers of the culture and music scene in America. The New York Philharmonic held concerts here until the larger Carnegie Hall was built in 1891 .
The upkeep of Steinway Hall was not without controversy in the family. In times of difficult business, the older brother Theodore demanded that the concert business be given up and that Steinway Hall be turned into a warehouse for pianos that were currently not for sale. William opposed this vehemently; Since he held the majority of the shares and was chairman of the management board after his father's death in 1871, he prevailed over his brother in this matter.
New York's Steinway Hall wasn't just for music. Other activities, such as the appearance of miracle healers, drug promotions, and New York suffragette gatherings , were conducted at Steinway Hall for rental income.
William Steinway realized early on that famous pianists playing Steinway instruments would be a promotional tool for the piano business. 3,000 spectators saw Anton Rubinstein's performance . Steinway believed that a Saturday night concert would translate into Monday morning sales . Other cultural highlights included performances by Fritz Kreisler , Walter Damrosch , Jenny Lind , readings by Charles Dickens and performances by the Boston Symphony Orchestra .
This business idea prompted piano manufacturers such as the Aeolian Company , Chickering & Sons and other piano makers to also build their own concert halls such as the Aeolian Hall and the Chickering Hall in New York. At the same time, other concert halls were opened in Boston , Chicago and Philadelphia .
These activities were derived from concert halls in Europe such as the Salle Pleyel in Paris and others in Berlin and Vienna. The main change, however - William Steinway's highlight - was that the way for the concert-goers from the entrance to the concert hall first led through the instrument exhibition and after the concert the visitors crossed the exhibition area again on their way to the exit - giving them time to think was given to want to own an instrument.
57th Street
In 1925, another Steinway Hall, which still exists today, was built on 57th Street, between Avenue of the Americas and Seventh Avenue, in New York. The new Steinway Building replaced the old Steinway Hall, which closed on January 11, 1925 and which no longer exists today. The marble exhibition and sales rooms are adorned with vaults and domes. The postmodern building also offers the possibility and the necessary technical facilities to broadcast musical performances as radio broadcasts. The opening ceremony on October 27, 1925 was broadcast on the radio with a performance by Willem Mengelberg and 35 Philharmonic in front of 300 invited guests. Well-known musicians, industrialists and politicians were among the guests. On the Steinways side were Frederick T. (President until 1927), Henry Ziegler, Theodore E. (President 1927–1952), William R., all of whom were grandsons of the company's founder Heinrich Steinweg . A joint appearance by Horowitz and Rachmaninoff took place in 1928 in the new Steinway Hall.
Offices that Steinway rented were located above the sales and concert halls, and several private apartments belonging to the Steinway family members were on the top floors.
Under new management, the Steinway Building and the property were sold in 1958; Steinway & Sons were now tenants in their own building. In May 1999, Steinway & Sons bought the building back for $ 62 million, but the property was only leased for 99 years.
The basement of Steinway Hall, a special place for piano enthusiasts, houses the grand piano “bank” for the USA. Well-known artists, the "Steinway Artists", choose their grand piano for the performances under the guidance of chief technician Ron Coner from the usually around 30 grand pianos and let him adjust to their wishes regarding intonation and mechanics. Artists often meet here; YouTube videos have become known from spontaneous concerts when professional pianists go to the concert grand by way of selection. Among the 30 grand pianos in stock , most of them the size D with a length of 2.74 m , there is often an ancient grand piano with a serial number of 51,000; It is the very first D concert grand of modern design, manufactured in New York in 1884. He has been in concert rental for Steinway for decades, is in great demand with pianists and is always well rented. It bears the concert grand piano number CD-1 (Concert D). Steinway New York is said to have more than 80 grand pianos; most of the wings have permanent locations elsewhere, such as the wings of Carnegie Hall, which are under contract maintenance at Steinway. In the typical V-shaped frame recess, next to their serial number, they also have the code CD-xxx as proof of their suitability for concert use and have enlarged lettering on the treble side, the side facing the audience, so that they can be used during TV and film recordings Advertise company. The concert instruments that Steinway normally surrenders after about five years represent a small, special market for enthusiasts. As a rule, the heavily stressed mechanics are rebuilt by restorers; new hammers and partly new strings result in an instrument that is almost as good as new. Ron Coner gets his supply of grand piano instruments through tips from the production department in Queens, when the intoneurs and end manufacturers there notice particularly good pianos.
At the end of June 2013, Steinway & Sons sold the building to a financial investor. The showroom will remain until the end of 2014, in the meantime the company is looking for new rooms. The Steinway Tower is currently being built on the neighboring property , named after the Steinway Hall, which will be integrated into the construction project and become part of the 435 m high apartment skyscraper.
1133 Avenue of the Americas (6th Avenue)
According to the New York Times of October 29, 2014, Steinway has now rented around 4,000 square meters of exhibition space at 1133 Avenue of the Americas in Midtown Manhattan in order to operate the New York sales exhibition there after the lease for the previous Steinway Hall expired.
Europe
With the concept of the Steinway Halls, William Steinway established a more than 100-year-old tradition that was continued outside of America. In 1875 the first piano sales business with concert hall in Europe was founded - Steinway Hall in London . For a short time, for a few months, a piano production facility was even operated at the London location. In 1904 the piano shop opened on Jungfernstieg in Hamburg , which was rebuilt in 1953 as the Steinway House in the Colonnaden after being destroyed in the war . In 1909 the Steinway House was established in Berlin , which in 1948 moved to the former home of the pianist Józef Hofmann , Hardenbergstrasse 9.
In 1999 the Steinway Hall Suisse Romande was opened at Hug Musique in Lausanne , and in 2003 the Steinway Gallery Zurich . In 2000, the traditional Karl Lang piano house in Munich was taken over and continued as the third Steinway house in Germany. The Pianohaus Lang in Hamburg was one of the oldest Steinway representatives in Germany. It also has a concert hall named after Arthur Rubinstein . In 2005, the location in the Colonnaden was given up and a new Steinway building with a concert hall named after Vladimir Horowitz was built opposite the Steinway factory at Rondenbarg 15 .
In order not to lag behind Steinway, the Berlin piano manufacturer C. Bechstein , at that time one of Steinway's greatest competitors , opened the Bechstein Hall in London in 1901, today's Wigmore Hall and other concert halls in Paris and Saint Petersburg.
Web links
- Steinway Hall Manhattan New York City
- Steinway Hall Dallas
- Steinway Hall Fort Worth
- Steinway Hall London
- Steinway Hall Plano
- Steinway Hall Suisse Romande
- Steinway House Berlin
- Steinway House Düsseldorf
- Steinway House Frankfurt
- Steinway House Hamburg
- Steinway House Munich
- Steinway House Vienna
Individual evidence
- ^ Heinrich Steinweg. in: Meyers Konversationslexikon. Vol. 15. Leipzig 1888, p. 280.
- ^ Steinway Hall opening concert
- ↑ Times article
- ^ Steinway Buys Its Building. in: New York Times.
- ↑ " Piano maker Steinway & Sons sells Steinway Hall in Manhattan "
- ^ Article in the New York Times on the relocation of the "flagship store"