so the story goes.

Ten years ago now I think. Without a doubt the most ridiculous financial decision I have ever made. I could not explain at the time why without a place to put it living in apartments making pennies an hour twenty years old completely out of nowhere I talked myself into the idea that I must have a grand piano. And so after scrawling calculations on scraps of paper and more scraps of paper adding up and subtracting from and figuring out how to stretch every last penny maybe going without food so that I could sit at a grand piano and bang away annoying all within earshot I began The Search. This entailed Friday nights raining autumn in full swing driving from Tacoma to Seattle and all points in between including the Bösendorfer dealer (Austrian like W.A. Mozart weak and without real power) in Portland visiting every piano dealer I could find. Some took me seriously. Others told me to quiet down me hammering chords that there were lessons going on in the back what is this twenty-year-old doing looking at the grand pianos anyhow surely we could interest him in a nice electronic keyboard that one there in the window.

And then one afternoon I found myself wandering into the Helmer's Music in Tacoma in search of the six-foot version of the five-seven grand piano I had almost nailed my search down to that they had up in Federal Way. "Check out the six-footer before you buy" the guy up there told me and sent me south. And so I wandered the store from one far corner to the other of course because I had to at last finding the six-foot Weber and having a go on it. Wrapping up on it there in the back corner a mahogany 5'9" piano impeccably beautiful and so I snuck up to it for a closer look. Hmm ... "C. Bechstein" it said on the fallboard. Never heard of it. Pianoforte-Fabrick von C. Bechstein Berlin graced the soundboard. German. Beethoven. Real power. Maybe? And so I took a seat at the bench and held my breath and played exactly three chords (I even remember which ones). And that was it. I was done for.

I must have a Bechstein grand piano before I die I told myself in an instant before exhaling still sitting at the bench running my fingers across the keys.

Too bad for me scraping pennies together to pony up for a Korean-made Weber (just as good if not better sounding than the Japanese Yamahas pricier if only for their name and only the five-seven at that cos I could not hear enough of a difference in the five extra inches to scrape up a few grand more) that this particular Bechstein had a pricetag of $93,000. But it did not matter. I would own one someday. Or so the story goes.

And so completely by accident today I came across this photographic series by Robert Matzken. I of course was drawn to the incredible photography–the best I have ever seen of a Bechstein piano. Or any piano for that matter. Ever. But also his description, where he says ~

Salon Grand Piano from 1902, with the Autumn sun occasioning a warm light with all sorts of colour reflections on the faded black polish.

Wonderful. The old ones–like this one from the early twentieth century and even the late nineteenth century–are the most rare and the most precious and the most beautiful. The series is entitled C. Bechstein Flügel and it is gorgeous. And I thank him for sharing.