Opinion | From Glenn Gould to Oscar Peterson to Boris Zarankin, a piano is a very individual choice

One of my favourite New Yorker cartoons shows a man standing in a country field, talking with a group of cows. “No, we’re Holsteins,” reads the caption. “Bosendorfers are pianos.”

And so they are; high-end Viennese pianos at that and the favourite instrument of Canada’s foremost jazz pianist, Oscar Peterson. Steinway, on the other hand, was the favourite of Canada’s foremost classical pianist, Glenn Gould, although he also played a Chickering at his family’s country cottage.

When I asked him why he chose a Yamaha instead for his second recording of Bach’s “Goldberg Variations,” the exasperated pianist insisted, although they denied doing so, that the movers had dropped and injured his beloved Steinway CD 318.

Pianos are more individual than is sometimes realized. When I was on the jury of the Sydney International Piano Competition in Australia, I noticed that the contestants were offered a choice of four different pianos. Although most initially chose Steinway, by the final round some switched allegiance to Yamaha. Steinway had neglected to send a technician to maintain its piano in tip-top condition.

Boris Zarankin’s 1879 Bechstein from Berlin was by no means in tip-top condition when the Toronto pianist bought it in Seattle many years ago. But after submitting it to a thorough restoration, he found it to be an ideal agent for his recording of Shostakovich’s “24 Preludes.”

Would Shostakovich, himself an accomplished pianist, have approved the choice of this vintage Bechstein? Perhaps not, Zarankin supposes, judging by the composer’s own fast-paced, crisply articulated recordings of the music. But the Toronto pianist also finds mellowness and lyricism in the “Preludes” that his Bechstein is well suited to serve.

Anyone can hear Zarankin’s on-demand performance of the “Preludes” for the Off Centre Music Salon. And he can be heard live at the next Off Centre concert, April 10 at Trinity-St. Paul’s Centre.

Bechstein was the dominant concert grand in the years before the Second World War. After the war, such major pianists as Arthur Rubinstein and Artur Schnabel refused to play it, saying “no more Hitler pianos,” switching their allegiance to Steinway, which remains the overwhelming choice of most concert artists.

Not that other choices do not exist. Leonard Bernstein played a Baldwin. And when the Canadian Music Centre in Toronto went hunting for a concert instrument it selected a Steingraeber from Bayreuth.

When I happened to be in Bayreuth for the Wagner music festival several years ago, I took the opportunity to visit the Steingraeber factory where I discovered, in pride of place in the showroom, Franz Liszt’s Steingraeber.

When in Warsaw I likewise visited the Chopin family apartment and there, in the drawing room, stood the composer-pianist’s Érard, a leading French piano of the day. Chopin was a famously intimate player, most comfortable in a salon setting. His Érard would be lost playing Tchaikovsky’s “B-flat minor Concerto” with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra in Roy Thomson Hall.

Canada was once home to a thriving piano manufacturing industry, with Toronto’s Heintzman among the leading names. My first piano was a Bell upright from Montreal. Today’s pianos are coming increasingly from Asia. Bruce Owen, recently deceased organizer of the popular Barrie Concert Series, chose a Shigeru Kawai from Korea.

Once a standard piece of living room furniture in middle class families, particularly in the days before radio and television, the piano no longer enjoys quite the popularity it once did. And yet, in the hands of a superstar such as Lang Lang, it continues to draw audiences in large numbers. Steinway even developed a Chinese model in the pianist’s honour.

Years ago, I was shown around Steinway headquarters on New York’s West 57th Street, including a visit to the basement to see the piano Vladimir Horowitz played when he performed across the street at Carnegie Hall. Even the hammers were specially treated to enhance articulation.

At the end of the tour my host, a company executive, asked if I would mind if she told me a piano joke. It went as follows:

After his death, Arthur Rubinstein was interviewed by St. Peter at the Pearly Gates and asked his name, what he did in life and what piano he played. “Please sit down,” he was told, as Jorge Bolet, a Baldwin artist, approached, was asked the same questions and told to go right in.

“Wait a minute,” Rubinstein protested. “I arrived first, you made me wait and you let him right in.” Looking down at Rubinstein with a sad face, St. Peter replied, “Don’t you think he has suffered enough?”