Steinway

This is a nicely written and well presented "coffee table book" about Steinway and its history. A nice addition to your library if you are a Steinway owner.

I am a representative sales person of the worlds finest all American hand crafted piano, Steinway & Sons at Jacobs Music Company in Lawrenceville, NJ. The Ronald Ratcliffe book is given as a gift to all of my customers who purchase this fine piano and reminds everyone everything they would ever want to know about Steinway. I would ask any serious piano owner or fan of this marvelous Steinway, to purchase it for themselves and keep it right on their table in the front room. It is the finest book of it's kind available anywhere. Five stars aren't even enough to describe the value of this book. I have been on a Steinway & Sons piano since the age of three and continue to perform everywhere in the country. The piano is #1 and so is Steinway by Ronald Ratcliffe...Sincerely, Stormin' Norman Seldin.

Very nice. Comprehensive. Plenty of pictures and illustrations.

If you love Steinway pianos this is a really good choice. There are a lot of fascinating historical details about one of America's premier companies. I gave it less than 5 stars because I think it could use a refresh in terms of content and maybe an improvement in paper and print quality.

Beautiful book, very interesting (History of Steinway Piano)

Ordered for my boss. Best gift I have ever given him.

This is an amazing book about an amazing company. I had always thought that Steinway was a German company with an American factory. The first line of Henry Z. Steinway's foreward lays that myth to rest:"The piano is an American invention. Historians of the piano traditionally start with Cristofori in Italy in the late seventeenth century, proceed to the eighteenth-century Vienna known to Mozart and Beethoven, and to London where in the early nineteenth century the first factories produced pianos in quantity. But in America, Iron entered the piano. The cast-iron frame was developed here, and by the middle of the nineteenth century the piano as we still know it was built by Americans."The book goes on to tell how the company's founder received an honor for bugling in battle at Napoleon's defeat at Waterloo, how some piano makers named Steinway opened the first Mercedes dealership in the US... before there were any roads for automobiles, how luminaries like Wagner, Liszt, Berlioz, Rubinstein, and Rachmaninoff raved about this instrument that was like no other, and--of course--how a family of German immigrants changed the face of music, and the piano in particular, by moving to America where they had the opportunity to do so.If you think a piano is a complex device, and it is, then you'll be amazed at the world's best piano's factory. The piano itself could be metaphorical for the entire factory. The instrument is wood and iron, ivory and felt. It's got 70,000 lbs. of tension stretched across tolerances so fine that the musicians can feel a difference of a couple of grams, or a millimeter variance. At one end of the factory you'll find logs floated in to be milled into piano materials, and iron to be cast in the foundery. At the other end you find bow ties and spats and painted fineries. The piano is full of such dichotomies. The Steinway family itself, though, seems very focused and adapted to its calling. It's almost miraculous that it happened at all. Perhaps America can take a bow for creating the opportunity that brought Europe knocking at Steinway Hall for a chance to play the finest instruments, and to compose music that suited it. Had it happened 50 years later, much of the repertoire we know would not be here.I was fascinated with the "perfect instrument:" a Steinway with no keyboard. No room for human error. It was a player piano -- an early home entertianment center. An instrument that brought the music to you. Think of it as an early iPod. ;^) But if there had been no stories at all, no text, I would have bought this book even for the pictures. Educational in places, sheer indulgence and delight in others. This is a beautiful book.Shooshie

A brilliant book giving the history of the Steinway piano. This book gives a full insight into the development and manufacture of these exceptional instruments and shows why these pianos are the finest in the world and hence the first choice of classical musicians. This book is a 'must' for any lover of pianos and their music. A book that should be on every music lovers bookshelf & is a real collectors item.