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Piedmont to showcase new Steinway in concert Sept. 16 (Right) Piedmont music professor Phillip Hayner unwraps the new Steinway piano at the college's Center for Worship with Byron Brown, right, of Steinway Piano Galleries of Atlanta and Steinway technicians Chris Upshaw and Kenny Heard. Christmas came early for the Piedmont College music department recently when the college unwrapped a brand new Steinway concert grand piano for the Center for Worship and Music at the Demorest campus. The public is invited to hear the inaugural concert for the 9-foot Steinway Model D at 7:30 p.m., Sept. 16, when Piedmont music professor Dr. Phillip Hayner will perform a free concert with selections by Bach, Haydn, Chopin, Debussy, and Ginastera. Hayner, and his wife, Joy, who also teaches music at Piedmont, had the enviable task of selecting the piano at the Steinway factory in New York City. The factory, founded in 1853, employs more than 500 craftsmen who still build the legendary pianos by hand, producing only 10 instruments per day. In the Steinway showroom, the Hayners had five grand pianos from which to select. "We had developed some criteria to test the instruments," Phillip Hayner said. "These included evenness of action and tone quality from bottom to top. We also addressed the individual characteristics of the various registers, low, middle and high, as well as the quietness of the pedal mechanism, the finish and overall appearance." After about an hour and a half of playing, the Hayners gave each piano a grade and then selected two for further testing in a larger room with better acoustics. "One was very bright and powerful, while the other was more subdued and refined," Hayner said. After further playing, listening and discussion, they decided on the more refined instrument to fit the acoustics of the Center for Worship and Music. "It is an exceptional instrument, offering the player a wide variety of sounds within each register," Hayner said. "It does possess the legendary Steinway power, but it also possesses a clarity and evenness of tone that will allow effective and impressive performances. It will be sensational in impressionistic music because of the subtlety of its various tone colors and in its superb tone quality at the softest levels. The folks in the factory probably hated to see this one leave.” For the inaugural concert, Hayner has selected five pieces to highlight the new piano's capabilities. These include "Chromatic Fantasy and Fugue" by Johann Sebastian Bach; "Andante con variationi in F-minor" by Franz Joseph Haydn; "Polonaise in F-sharp minor" by Fryderyck Chopin; "Etude pour les Arpèges composes" by Claude Debussy; and "Sonata (1952)" by Alberto Ginastera. -30- |
