Two of my daughters bought me a subscription to Netflix for father's day. I have made heavy use of it in the last month and discovered a number of gems. One that may be of interest to many of you is a documentary lasting one hour and 21 minutes which follows the progress of a Steinway Concert Grand serial number L1037 as it makes it's year long journey through the Steinway piano factory. One of 2000 pianos that Steinway makes annually, we witness the extensive and meticulous hand labor that goes into the making of one of these masterpieces. Starting at $25,000 dollars and with essentially no upper limit these pianos are made in the exact same process that they have been built for the last 100 years.

Individual craftsmen, representing every continent on the planet, describe their particular contribution to the process. With no automation, and rarely even a power tool, every piece of the piano is hand fabricated and assembled, many steps requiring a full days labor by individual craftsmen. The process culminates in 4 chip tunes, a rough tune, a fine tune and then the final voicing process all done by ear, no computer tuning allowed.

Interspersed amongst the fabrication steps are side trips to places like Sitka, Alaska where a Steinway wood technologist hand selects individual strips of spruce that will become the critical soundboard, the voice of the piano, and interviews with pianists like Lang Lang, Harry Connick Jr., and Hank Jones as they talk about what makes a good piano for them. We see various artists in the selection room as they audition numerous pianos for just the right tone, sustain, and touch for their particular style of playing. Each individual piano has a personality and each pianist searches for the piano with the personality compatible with his own.

In the end I was left believing that these pianos are worth every penny of the $120,000 that a typical Steinway Concert Grand fetches and in awe of the skills of the craftsmen (and women) that bring them to life. Well worth the hour and 21 minutes I spent captivated by this video that is every bit the labor of love that the pianos themselves are.