Piano buyers today have bewildering choices on the market. While for many years there have been only a few brands known or available, today there are many. Pianos in Vancouver B.C. now include such names as Fazioli, Sauter, Bosendorfer, Bluthner, Estonia, Brodmann and many others.
While many try to find the differences between all these, it is getting difficult for even experts to clearly discern between each make or model. It is a bit reminiscent to the times when in Europe and North America there were literally hundreds of different makers, all competing with each other.
But it wasn’t always about *competition* and often much more about the region and music tradition in such area. There also were clearly favourite art forms and expressions of music. Just think of the use of harpsichords for which much of the early music was written for, including Bach, Haendel and so on.
Originating from Germany myself, it has always amused me that in some think only certain makes such as Yamaha or Steinway are suitable instruments with regards to music-making, something that is in clear contradiction considering the the history of music, especially on the European home continent itself.
Today’s globalization and methods of production and transportation have allowed the type of rapid penetration of markets previously deemed difficult. There are German pianos available in even the remotest part of the Orient today and in reverse, oriental pianos in every single country of Europe.
Add to this the many joint ventures between such companies as Steinway and Pearl River China, Kawai and Boston Japan, Bechstein and Hailun, China, Steingraeber and Ritmuller [Pearl River] China, Brodmann and Steinberg, Germany and so on and it’s easy to loose orientation of what’s exactly what these days. Or is it?
All of this is increasingly reflected in the sound and “quality” of the various instruments with seemingly more and more similarities emerging between the various makers and models all the time.
For this reason we believe the only way to experience the diverse world of pianos today is to sample the different makers, perhaps between the very high and lower end but certainly within same or near same price range!
Perhaps for this reason, more and more people are drifiting towards those pianos which are not only cheaper but offer near same quality to those of much higher price range. Just like this family whose highly advanced son who had looked at pianos over 60 k before.
And then found one under 30k offering virtually same!
Read about this here:
