The unusual piano, made in Belgium, will make its debut in Manhattan tonight. It’s more than a foot longer than a Steinway grand.
Good morning. It’s Tuesday. We’ll find out about the unusual-looking piano that will make its Carnegie Hall debut tonight. We’ll also find out about a poll that went to big spenders, as the United States Tennis Association considers whether to build suites costing $175,000 per person at the U.S. Open.
There’s something different about the piano that will be onstage at Carnegie Hall tonight. “It looks like you’re looking at a normal piano through funny mirrors,” according to Jonathan Biss, who will play Beethoven’s “Emperor” concerto on it.
The piano has a curved keyboard.
But it’s not a giant toy that a clown could bang on at the circus. Biss is no clown. Neither was the architect Rafael Viñoly, who came up with the idea and worked closely with Chris Maene, the instrument maker in Belgium who built the piano.
Viñoly, who died in March, was an advanced amateur pianist and wanted an instrument that would be more comfortable to play than a conventional one. The pianist Pam Goldberg tried it out with Bach and Liszt last week and said, “You feel like you’re enveloped in it.”
Wynona Wang, another pianist who tried the piano, said it was “magically more comfortable.” As she lit into a Tchaikovsky concerto, minus the orchestra, she said the reconfigured piano seemed smaller than a conventional one. Goldberg, by contrast, said that because of the curve, “it feels like there are more keys.”