| Ballade
for a Piano: Grotrian Steinweg 21504 Page 3 of 4 III. The Sanfords Ronald Sanford had a successful career with Southern Pacific Railroad. In the 1970s, he developed an interest in, first, player pianos, and then performing pianos. After tinkering with them for a while, he and Merle decided they wanted to pursue second careers as piano technicians. Ronald took early retirement from Southern Pacific, and they began their study, soon receiving certification. After working a few years as technicians, they began to accept restoration projects. Here, they found, was their passion. Though neither of them will admit to being a pianist, they were smitten by the instruments. Now, years later, their international reputation is such that they have offers for more projects than they can accept. Through Patrick Baum, we made an appointment for them to come examine GS 21504. They came, I played a bit for them, they pored over the piano for two hours… and agreed to do it. Estimated time for the job: eight months. In early December, 1998, the piano movers appeared and took GS 21504 to Pasadena. I didn’t see the piano again until June, when Patrick e-mailed to say that the "case" (that is, the wood exterior and legs) was back from the re-finishers if I would like to see it. Off we went to Pasadena. The Sanfords occupy a modest, mint-condition asbestos-shingled bungalow which, one day, when even Pasadena becomes yuppified, is going to bring on a bidding war. The house gives nothing away about what is in the rear. Most of the backyard is occupied by a free-standing workshop. You walk into a large open space with various arcane tools and supplies lining the walls. It is brightly lit and spotless, with an air of absolute professionalism. I instantly was reminded of one other space I’d been in years ago with a similar aura of perfectionist purity: Dr. Denton Cooley’s operating room at the Texas Medical Center (I was doing a magazine piece on Cooley and got to watch him in action).
And there in the center of the room was GS 21504. Or at least its empty body (the action was elsewhere in the room undergoing its own restoration). With a difference. All its war scars were gone, its warped lid was renewed and made whole, its pedal lyre was back in place with correct bracing, its minimalist scrollwork was now intact—and all of it restored to a gleaming ebony finish. Tears came and I hastily turned away while Patrick and the Sanfords chatted. In the conversation that day, I began to get an inkling of the level of craft at which the Sanfords work. "Craft" seems not quite the right word. Because what they do is actually art: the art of restoration. To explain: A concert grand piano has somewhere around 7,000 pieces. The first thing the Sanfords had done was to disassemble the piano. Imagine: 7,000 pieces. Then they examined each piece, to determine whether it could be restored or should be replaced. They found, to their delight, that, because of the good condition (and the quality of the manufacturer’s original workmanship) few parts needed replacing. It was mostly a matter of cleaning and, in some cases, re-plating small metal pieces. The strings would be replaced, as would the hammers. Example of the level of detail at which the Sanfords work: When they had taken the wheels off the case, they had noticed that the small axle on one wheel had been bent and had abraded its housing so that the wheel no longer turned smoothly. They had somehow brazed the housing and replaced the axle. And of course all three wheels and their housing had been restored to their original gleaming brass finish. Another unexpected revelation from just the case of the piano. Inside the keyboard cover one sees, in lettering maybe 1½ inches high, the manufacturer’s name and the city: Grotrian-Steinweg
So. In June, the case was finished. All that remained was the 6,000-odd pieces of the action. When we left that day, I was already beginning to get nervous. No matter how beautiful the externals, the real test would come when I played the first chord. How would the "new" GS 21504 sound? Would it still have that marvelous 19th century deep resonance? |
I’m now going to tell the Sanfords’ story, as I understand it. This
piece is not hardcore journalism. It is, please note, a ballade. It is certainly possible
I have some details wrong in what follows. If I do, I apologize to the Sanfords (photo).
Any errors are those of love and awed admiration.
In all those hours of playing, my eye had read those letters as
gilt, painted on the surface of the wood. Wrong. Turns out they were individual brass
letters, each carefully seated into the wood of the lid. The Sanfords had removed the
letters, one by one, cleaned, and refinished each one, and then re-seated them.