In January of this year, Braunschweig's Schimmel family sold a 90% stake in its company to China's state-owned Pearl River Piano Group.
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In April 2015, Braunschweig piano builder Grotrian-Steinweg announced that it had sold a two-thirds stake in its company to Parsons Music, of Hong Kong - which, only two years earlier, had purchased the Wilhelm Steinberg company. But Germany, arguably the instrument's spiritual home, is now undergoing one of the most dramatic changes in its nearly 300-year history of making pianos. Change is normal, and consolidation is nothing new. To be sure, the annals of the piano industry are filled with firms that grew, thrived, and died.
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Dramatic Changesīut the Musikmesse's demarcation line is deceptive in this age of globalization, when the world of pianos has never been more muddled. Everything to the left of the main aisle is from Asia, mainly Chinese companies with odd names like Otto Meister, Beijing, and Nanjing Schumann. To the right are the German pianos and other Europeans: Italy's Fazioli and the Czech Republic's Petrof (Austria's Bösendorfer was with its owner, Yamaha, in a different hall). The main aisle running through the center of the hall appears to be a Continental - and a cultural - divide. The unholy din makes it hard to hear anything you play - like offering an art lover a blindfolded tour of the Louvre.Īfter one quick circuit, I have my bearings. It's heaven for piano lovers, but also hell: so close to the world's greatest pianos, yet so far. Enter Hall 9 and you're blasted with stuffy air particles, all vibrating with cacophonous Chopin, grinding Gershwin, and, surfing atop the soundwaves, a brutal rendition of Beethoven's "Ode to Joy."įor a few days each year, Frankfurt welcomes the Who's Who of the piano world, led every other year by the big German brands: Blüthner, August Förster, Grotrian-Steinweg, Schimmel, Seiler, Wilhelm Steinberg, Steingraeber & Söhne, and more. The piano hall of Frankfurt's sprawling Musikmesse sounds like a three-way collision of Tin Pan Alley, the Brill Building, and Phil Spector's Wall of Sound.
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Our correspondent attended the 2016 gathering, at a time of great change for the German piano industry. European piano makers convene there every other year. EACH SPRING, Frankfurt, Germany, hosts Musikmesse, one of the world's largest gatherings for the international music industry.