Welcoming the Bösendorfer

On August 21, I posted about the day five years earlier, on August 21, 2018, when I parted ways with the Kawai Classic grand piano that I had owned for more than 35 years.  It was an occasion of nostalgic sadness but also of eager anticipation.  A few minutes after the Kawai went out the door, I welcomed to the household my new piano, a Bösendorfer 7’4″.  It has 92 keys.  The four extra keys, at the left end of the keyboard, are seldom used and are usually covered with a hinged panel, but the sympathetic resonances of these extra strings (along with other technical differences in the Bösendorfer’s construction) contribute to the rich tone quality of the piano.

Bösendorfer pianos range from the customary 88 keys up to 97 keys.  The model with the full 97 keys represents a full range of eight octaves (C0 to C8) and was developed at the behest of composer Ferruccio Busoni, who needed the low C0 for his transcriptions of Bach’s organ music.  My 92-key instrument is thus an intermediate version, called the 225 model because its length is 225cm.

When I decided in the summer of 2018 to upgrade my piano, I narrowed down the choices to a certain Steinway along with this Bösendorfer, and I then sought out advice.  I learned that both Steinway and Bösendorfer have their own adherents, each side defending its own favored manufacturer with great fervor.  Eventually, I decided that the Bösendorfer would be particularly well-suited to the kind of music I played and the environment in which it would be played.  Since I purchased the instrument five years ago, I have recorded a total of 38 works on the new piano for my YouTube channel, RobertCunninghamsMusic. 🙂