Artur Schnabel: On pianos

I got a Bechstein piano. They were, in Germany, what Steinway is in the United States and Bosendorfer in Vienna. The Bechstein was for certain musical purposes an ideal instrument. Why the best pianos made in Germany, in Austria, in France and the US differ, is a fascinating question. I have come to the conclusion that it must have been the personality of the locally most successful, most respected, most influential pianiast of an earlier generation which decided the character of the instrument. His style, repertoire, ambitions presented a model, created a fashion, acquired validity. I estimate that three quarters of the piano music publicly performed in Germany before 1900 belonged to the pre-Wagnerian epoch. Pianos were built in accordance with the sonority requirements of that music ( as understood by the pianistic 'commander in chief' ). Three quarters of the music performed in the States belonged to the post-Wagnerian epoch, demanding more 'extrovert' qualities of key- and sound-boards. It is desirable and, I think also feasible gradually to abandon these provincial distinctions of pianos and to provide a type good for any musical climate.

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Q: Could you tell us something more about the differences between the pianos you used in Europe and liked so much and our instruments here?
A: Those pianos had less of a personality. I would say that the quality which distinguishes the piano from all other instruments, is its neutrality. On a piano a single tone cannot be beautiful; it is the combination and proportion of tones which bring beauty.
You are forced to produce at least two or three tones in order to create a sensous impression or to give a sensation of music to the ear, while almost other instruments (except percussion) or the voice can give you a sensuous pleasure even from a single tone. Around 1910 it was considered "modern' to say that the piano is a percussion instrument.....
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He can produce all kinds of tones; not only louder or softer, shorter or longer, but also different qualities. It is possible on a piano to imitate, for instance, the sound of an oboe, a cello, a French horn. Bit it is not possible to imitate the sound of an oboe on a flute, or a clarinet on a violin; these other instruments always retain their own characteristics. That is why I said that the distinction of the piano is in its being the most neutral instrument.

The Bechstein piano fulfilled this demand for neutrality better than any other piano I have known. You could do almost anything on that piano. The Steinway - or rather the Steinway of 20 years ago, for it has changed somewhat since that time- was a piano which always wanted to show something. You see it had much too much of a personality of its own.

At first when I wanted to produce something like the voice of a bird on a Steinway, the piano always sounded to me like the voice of a tenor instead of a bird. For many years I had the feeling that the Steinway piano did not like me. An absurd idea, but I had that feeling.

It would not take the kind of treatment I gave a piano, so I conclude that the Steinway is more limited. The Bechstein piano enabled me to show effects not possible on a Steinway. The tone of the Steinway vibrates much more; also there are technical reaons: it has a different action.

When you push a Steinway key very lightly and slowly down, it will stop before it has reached the bottom and requires a certain pressure, a second pressure to go down all the way.
By now I am so used to it that it hardly irritates me. At first, it disturbed me greatly: for in order to produce a fortissimo, you can play lightly, but whenever you want to play a pianissimo you have to use a great deal of weight as otherwise the key would not go down. It certainly seems perverse.