Steinway Piano (part 2)

The Duke of Brunswick personally purchase a Steinweg piano for 300 talers and master Heinrich no longer has to worry about the strength of his reputation. After making 482 pianos and advancing to become a sought-after manufacturer, the lean years suddenly set in. Famines, bad harvest and customs duties cripple trade.

Steinweg looks for a way out and therefore sends his son Karl to New York. The boy is supposed to find out whether the country of unlimited possibilities holds similar prospects for the Steinweg family. Karl’s forecast is extremely positive-he implores his father to make the courageous move to the New World.

On May 19, 1850 53-year-old Heinrich Steinweg, his wife and his children embark on their long voyage from Hamburg. Six weeks later the family lands in New York. The city is big, and the neatly clad, bow-tied gentlemen is uncertain. Unable to read or write, will he be able to find his feet here? As competent workers, luck is on their side. Heinrich and his sons find work with an American piano maker. The Steinwegs know their trade, they are hard-working and their pianos are of high quality. But the rewards are low and so, on March 5, 1853, they again risk founding their own business. “Build the best possible piano,” instructs the father who Americanizes their name in the following year. Heinrich Steinweg is 57 when he renames himself Henry Steinway. Steinway & Sons benefit from the spirit of the age.



In America, the most popular instrument is the piano. The first Steinway piano to be produced, correctly numbered 483, is sold to an American family for 500 dollars-it now stands in New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art. Demand and profits continue to increase, the original premises soon become too small. Steinway & Sons moves to the district of Queens in 1860, the year that the piano makers from Germany beat all their American competitors for the first time. In Queens the company still manufacturer pianos in one of the largest factories in the whole of New York. Time seems to have stood still: grand pianos are still made by hand, and it often takes over a year to produce one instrument. So, it is hardly surprisingly that present-day prices start at 40,000 dollars.

Parallel to their progress in America, the Steinway also secured their market lead in the old continent and was appointed as suppliers of European monarchies, the German and Austrian emperors and the Tsar of Russia. Recalling its family roots in the 19th century, Steinway again set up a factory, this time in Hamburg. This company now sells about ten percent of its piano in the family’s old home country.