Desert Island Luxury Item

The BBC Radio program ‘Desert Island Discs,’ created by Roy Plomley in 1941, has a very simple formula that works every time. A castaway is invited to share eight favourite records during what is usually, a relaxed discussion about the castaway’s life. At the end of the program, it is imagined that the castaway must choose one of the eight records to take to the island, and is also given the works of Shakespeare, a copy of the Bible, and (since 1951) one luxury item to make life on the island more bearable. Each of these choices reveal further layers of the cast-away’s personality.

The program has been going long enough to throw up some interesting statistics.

According to the  BBC’s website. From over 22,000 choices, the Castaways’ Top Tracks is
1. Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 in D minor.
2. Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 2 in C minor. 

Notice that piano music ranked very highly! 

 The Castaways’ Top Composers
1. Mozart
2. Beethoven
3. Bach
4. Schubert
These guys are mostly associated with keyboard music!

According to the Telegraph, the top luxury item choice is a piano! What else would one choose?

This is music to the ears of all piano tuners. It shows that despite the convenience and ready availability of music these days, the piano holds a very special place in the lives of these castaways. The piano is the most interactive of musical instruments. The very principles that drove the piano’s development in the early 1700s, still attract the desire for self-expression.

It would be a good thing if it were made official: 
The Piano really is the top choice of luxury items!

The Piano World

© Steve Burden
Pianology

  

Piano-making in UK.

Once again the less-than-perfect state of new pianos has been highlighted this week. This week, I have seen or worked on 4 pianos not yet 2 years old that have needed extra technical attention before they can be considered satisfactory. Nobody likes hearing the same old moan time and time again, but the customer has to live with the reality of their choice of piano. Most of these keen pianists are paying good money and are at a loss to understand why their pianos are not as good as was expected.

I have been reading Alastair Laurence's book Five London Piano Makers, and I am sure I have detected in the book, hints of a similar mood of disappointment. He says in his introduction, "The near total collapse of British piano making means that there seems to be little likelihood of those fascinating centres of musical workmanship - the small piano factories - ever being seen again on these shores."

Anyone who has worked in a piano workshop will know something of the atmosphere of constant and affectionate labour over the many apparently lifeless components of a piano. Workers feel a strange and invisible force urging them towards the later stages of repair work - that stage when the piano is touched with the magic of creativity and is now finished! Maybe in other professions, something of the same drive is at work, but wherever there are pianos and music, the mixture is intoxicating.

The fact that there are fewer 'centres of musical workmanship' in the UK is partly due to the poor standard of piano produced during the late 1970s. Piano makers were now competing with imported pianos from the far east which, frankly, were better. Cost cutting meant, the fine finishing of the pianos was cut to a minimum, thus bringing forward the eventual demise of the industry.

Alas, many of the cheaper imported pianos are as less-than-perfect as was the case in the UK in the late 1970s. The best we can do is to make good what we can and hope that one day finesse, better reliability and the positive feedback that should follow a piano purchase will be rather more common than it is today. Let us hope that the tide of piano-making doldrums might be on the turn! 

Whether what remains of the piano industry in the UK can get its act together strongly enough to meet the challenge remains to be seen. I share Alastair Laurence's finishing word of hope: "With luck, a new, younger generation of piano makers here will help to ensure the survival of piano-making skills in Britain throughout the twenty-first century." 

We have work to do!

The Piano World

© Steve Burden
Pianology
  

Welmar Pianos

The story of the Welmar piano begins at the end of the first world war. The hardships of the post-war economy gave the piano trade an uphill struggle as it sought to re-establish sales and profitability. Whelpdale and Maxwell began business in 1876 importing Bluthner pianos from Germany and until the war, they had built a strong business on the qualities of the Bluthner pianos. In 1919, the public were now unhappy about buying German pianos, and Whelpdale & Maxwell had to find an alternative source of income until the mood against German pianos had softened.

Cremona Ltd. of Camberwell, London, made pianos for the trade and used names like Squire & Longson, Ronson and Paul Newman. In 1919 Whelpdale & Maxwell commissioned Cremona Ltd to make pianos using the trade name Welmar.

The Cremona team continued to develop and improve their pianos - particularly the metal frame and the soundboard. But in 1929, disaster hit when the factory was burnt down. The company never recovered from the catastrophy and closed the business in 1934.

Whelpdale Maxwell & Codd (as it now was), managed to acquire the Cremona designs, jigs and templates and began making Cremona-designed pianos but using the Welmar name at a new factory at Clapham Park Road. 

Production continued at Clapham until 2001, when, at an extremely difficult time for the piano trade, all was moved for a short time, to Stroud in Gloucestershire.

The Welmar piano has always been appreciated by serious piano players and students. They were built with the Bluthner tone in mind, by craftsmen devoted to the art of piano-building. Welmar pianos are almost universally admired by piano tuners! And, as they are generally hard to please - this is no small achievement.

Welmar Serial Nos.

Directory of Piano Makers

© Steve Burden