Ballade for a Piano:
Grotrian Steinweg 21504

How Two Miracle-workers in Pasadena, Texas,
Gave a Gift of Music to the 21^st Century

By Douglas Milburn

I. How I Met Grotrian Steinweg 21504

In the fall of 1958, I arrived in Hamburg to study for a year. An October day found me standing in line at the American consulate to get information about finding a room. The person behind me overheard my questions and as I walked out introduced himself. His name was Bernhard von Nicolai. He had just returned from four years of study at Ohio State and his family, it seemed, wanted to reciprocate the hospitality he had found in America by renting a room in their house to an American student and would I be interested? We went to look at the room.

The "house", at Schöne Aussicht 10, turned out to be what Europeans call a villa, in this case, a three-story neo-classical structure of marble and granite, with terraces and patios at various levels overlooking the Alster, the lake in the center of Hamburg.

Bernie took me to a large third-floor room at the front of the house. A wall of double-paned windows looked across the Alster (photo) with its several bridges toward the gothic city hall. In the far distance, one saw the massive cranes of the port of Hamburg. In one corner of the room was a six-foot Kachelofen, a beautiful porcelain coal stove, covered with mauve tiles depicting scenes of outdoor eighteenth-century life.

In another corner was a piano. I had already told Bernie I would take the room. Now he said, "I hope you don’t mind the piano. If it’ll be in your way, we can have it moved out." I opened the dusty lid, played a few notes, and told Bernie I thought it wouldn’t really be in the way....

Whereupon he told me the story of Grotrian Steinweg 21504. The von Nicolai’s bought the piano new in 1903, for his great-aunt who was a professional accompanist. The piano traveled Europe with her before and after the First World War. After her death, it remained in the house in Hamburg. During the Second World War, the family moved to Berlin and the piano went with them. In 1944, during the massive bombings, their house was hit. The piano was saved, moved outside, and sat on the street for two nights as Berlin burned. Bernie’s father then arranged for the family and their surviving belongings, including the piano, to be moved to the monastery in Salzburg for the remainder of the war. The piano thus lived in Salzburg for three years, until the family returned to Hamburg in 1947. The villa had survived the bombing of Hamburg, and the piano was stored in the third-floor room, unplayed, until the day Bernie showed up with me in tow.

I was in Hamburg to study not music (I am at best a so-so amateur pianist; nonetheless, a person for whom life without music is difficult to imagine) but German literature. No doubt my knowledge of German literature today would be a lot better if the piano had not been lurking over in the corner. At least my piano-playing improved in the year I was there. As word spread among people I met in Hamburg, musicians of various sorts began appearing at the door to play Grotrian Steinweg 21504.

When the time came for me to leave, Bernie asked if I would like to buy the piano. I talked to my father, and in the fall of 1959, the piano arrived in Fort Worth. The piano stayed there until 1979, when Ruth (my spouse) and I brought it to Houston. It was thus the piano that our two sons, Andy and Chris, grew up with. Until December, 1998, it was cared for by Patrick Baum (photo), a piano technician with a love for the instrument and a deep interest in alternative tunings.

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