The Nashville Symphony has been on a quest to find the perfect piano.
Both of the orchestra’s Steinway concert grands were ruined in last year’s flood.
One replacement was found at the company’s factory in New York, but the orchestra wanted the second to come from the Steinway facility in Hamburg, Germany. That gives visiting soloists a choice between two somewhat different-sounding instruments.
This month, pianist Jean-Yves Thiboudet joined Symphony CEO Alan Valentine in Hamburg to test all of the new instruments that were ready and available for purchase there.
Valentine says they found The One fairly quickly.
“Not only a very big sound, but it had a lot of soul, it had a lot of character in sort of the middle register and the treble, which were really just beautiful.”
Valentine says it’s never clear how long it will take for a piano to ship from Europe and pass through customs, but he hopes to take posession sometime in April. After that, there’s just one major flood-related job left to finish: installation of a pipe connecting the symphony hall’s pumping system to the city’s stormwater drains.
On Air - 90.3 WPLN-FM