Page 62 - PDF Flip TR Program Demo

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About Tippet Rise
THE HISTORY OF THE PIANOS AT TIPPET RISE
Belle Côte, a rise in a piano comes along once in a decade. No one knows how to ensure its creation. It can’t be finessed or coaxed if it isn’t there from the start.
The art of great pianos had risen so high by 2013 that Steinways were at their historic peak. Steinway had decided to end the contest between their two locations, Hamburg and New York, by replacing U.S. action parts with the German parts made by the Renner Company, eliminating the complaint that the American action was stiffer than the German. Just as significant was the thickening of felts on the hammers from 17-pound to 21-pound weights, and the pre-hardening of the felts in the factory, so the hammers produced a brilliant, sing- ing tone right out of the gate. Cosmetically, the New York piano case itself was brushed with the glossy polyester finish used by the Germans, and the New York wheel casters were swapped for the impressive German double-brass monsters. The only way you can now tell the difference between the American and German Steinway is that Amer- ican piano cases still have a rectangular edge on either side of the keyboard. So the great pianos are not only the ones from the 1890s or the 1930s, but from the Golden Year of 2013.
Tippet Rise has two of these shiny 2013 super-Steinways. The polyester finish is the same used by Ferrari. It is glistening but fragile.
The extraordinary Istomin-Horowitz CD-18 was used by Vladimir Horowitz for his legendary performance of the Rachmaninoff Third Piano Concerto with Eugene Ormandy and the New York Philharmonic Orchestra, which is available on video as well as on CD.
His good friend Eugene Istomin was the only person Horowitz would lend the piano to, and Istomin used it for his own legendary recording of the Rachmaninoff Second Piano Concerto, also with Eugene Ormandy, but with Ormandy’s famous Phildelphia Orchestra, famous for its lush Russian violin section. After Horowitz died, Istomin bought the piano and used it for 17 years on his famous tours to the small towns of the United States. This was before people had stereos. They had RCA monophonic turntables with the famous Listening Dog horn attached. So many people in North America heard their first classical music concerts from this piano.
Eugene Istomin ran the great Casals Festival in Puerto Rico and in Spain for many years with his wife, Casals’s widow, Marta Casals Istomin. Marta had become the artistic advisor of the Kennedy Center in Washington, and has been for many years at the center of the classical world. She was friends with the piano technician for the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, Tali Mahanor, who had traveled with Eugene Istomin around the country for many years, maintaining CD-18. It was through our friendship with Tali that Marta heard of Tippet Rise. We had been introduced to Tali
by Wu Han, the co-director of the Lincoln Center Chamber Players. Tali is more than a technician; she has been for most of her life the true wizard of every aspect of how music is reproduced by the antique behemoths which to this day are the ultimate barometer of how we experience sound. Only a few years ago, Marta Istomin made the astonishing decision to let Tippet Rise acquire
the great Istomin-Horowitz CD-18, one of the legendary pianos of the last century, and the