Adieu to a Steinway

When we first received the Steinway, it took up a big corner of the house in Bussum. I was afraid it was too close to the fire place. Robert joked, “Well that’s a lot of wood to burn, for a long time.”

Throughout the years, from the Steinway Welkomfest in Bussum to our house concerts in Utrecht, visiting concert pianists brought out the depth and breadth of sound — warm nostalgic tones from the Romantic era.

As I scout the market for its next owner, I can’t help thinking that once again I am saying goodbye to a friend via cyberspace. I am unable to play it, caress it, or hear it. I am on the other side of the world, answering e-mail enquiries and writing to those who might have a hand in its future.

A friend sent me 4 consecutive e-mails of the following video from the New York Times. He really wanted to make sure I got it, I guess. It’s not a nice way to say goodbye, and I surely hope it will not be the death of mine.

Requiem for a Piano (video)

Another friend sent me the NY Times article that wrapped around the above video: For More Pianos, Last Note is Thud in the Dump.

For sale: 1908-1909 New York Steinway model A, Utrecht, The Netherlands

Listen to me playing my Adieu to a Piano on every one of the 88 keys of the Steinway, saying goodbye to its predecessor in London. [MP3]

Adieu to a piano by Anne Ku (3 page PDF)

Remembering Villa Maria

During our tightly packed 5-week concert tour from Boston to Maui (18 Oct – 25 Nov 2010), we did not have the time to write about every concert. Needless to say, this does not mean that we do not remember them!

When my friend Grace e-mailed me that Villa Maria was up for sale, I discovered I hadn’t even mentioned this important concert that flew us into Houston, cutting short our stay in Phoenix!

Villa Maria concert in Houston, Texas, November 2010. Photo: Rodney Waters

My friend Linda had pushed for us to perform in that mansion. I had no idea it was so grand, the occasion so elegant and completely out of this world.

Houston was where house concerts started for me. In February 2001, I performed in a concert of improvised music. There were two Steinways, one from New York, the other from Hamburg, side by side. It was River Oaks. It was my first house concert.

Who would have thought that I’d be back in Houston nearly 10 years later, actually giving concerts?

I invited my friend Grace to the concert at Villa Maria. She probably thought every house concert was just like that — something out of a movie or ancient Rome.

It was a guitar extravaganza — a program already full. But the organizers managed to squeeze us in – just 20 minutes which became 15 minutes – 2 pieces: Vivaldi’s Winter from Four Seasons and Manuel de Falla’s La Vida Breve.

The owners sat directly in front of the stage like the patrons of days past. The concert hall was purposefully built and opened onto the balcony. Beneath was where we warmed up — a converted gym. Robert recalls: “it was my first time, being in a 5-star gym as a green room and the stage was like a Roman villa, complete with paintings: the perfect backdrop for a program with Vivaldi.”

The article neglected to mention the prized and decorated Doris Duke Steinway grand piano that I played on. I wonder if that is for sale, too? [Open the article in full view and scroll to the middle to read about this 1901 New York Steinway Model B.]

For sale: Steinway grand piano

Asking price Euro 21,000     now euro 19,500

• Location: Keulsekade 25, 3531JX Utrecht, the Netherlands
• Steinway model A (188 cm = 6 ft 1 to 2 inches)
• New York
• Serial number: 134814
• Year built: 1908 or 1909  — the golden age of pianos
• Purchased in 2004 from Bilthoven;
• Inside: new strings; hammer felts; regulated, voiced, refinished (polished) euro 5,500
• Ivory keys, French polish
• Moved to Bussum & Utrecht (current location)
• Regulated and voiced in 2008
• Damp-chaser installed for euro 500
• Regularly tuned and maintained & used for professional recordings of Bekkers Piano Guitar Duo and intimate concerts in Monument House Concert Series (twice a year).
• Reason for selling: owner lives in Hawaii now
• Additional background information, including history and sound clips.
• Also available: 30 folding black chairs from the Monument House Concert Series and sheet music

Please use LEAVE A REPLY box below for enquiries & appointments. These will NOT be posted but owner will reply.

First time buying a Steinway? Download the Steinway Buyer’s Guide for free.

Steinway Grand at the Monument House, Utrecht, Photo: Fokke v.d. Meer, 2012

Steinway Grand at the Monument House, Utrecht. Photo: Fokke v.d. Meer, 2012

Steinway Grand at the Monument House, Utrecht. Photo: Fokke v.d. Meer, 2012

Steinway Grand at the Monument House, Utrecht. Photo: Fokke v.d. Meer, 2012

Sound clips:

Amaranthinesque – piano duet 4 hands, by Chip Michael, performed by Anne Ku & Brendan Kinsella, Utrecht, Netherlands July 2011

Fantasy Impromptu – Chopin – performed by Rie Tanaka, Bussum, Netherlands, June 2004 (shortly after purchase & restoration)

Canyons by Thomas Osborne

We six pianists first met on Sunday 4th March 2012 in Ruth Murata’s Maui Music Conservatory. Ebb & Flow Arts had commissioned a new piece for 4 pianos. As time marched on, we got anxious if we’d get the score in time to study individually and then rehearse as a group.

As with all new music, the approach is to first scan it, assess the difficulty and amount of time required to study it. We’d identify the challenging areas and spend more time studying them than the rest. We’d use a metronome to ensure we keep to a steady beat.

When we got together to rehearse on subsequent Sunday afternoons, we’d notice that the music for 4 pianos was quite different from the single score we were given to study. After studying Milhaud’s Paris, Busby’s Four!, Depue’s 16 Pawns, and two piano works, we learned towards the end of May, that Honolulu-based composer Thomas Osborne’s new work was ready.

When I first looked at “Canyons” I didn’t know what to make of it. The mp3 recording sounded extremely exciting though. I was willing to give it a chance. I became one of the pianists committed to studying it for premiere on 14th July. Robert Pollock, the founder and director of Ebb & Flow Arts, planned for us three pianists to rehearse and the last 3 rehearsals with the composer as the 4th pianist.

“Canyons” plays on the term canons. It uses imitation and terraced dynamics to produce the kind of echo effect you can hear in a canyon. The first pianist to play is Piano 4 — loud. The next pianist — Piano 3 — is slightly less loud. These dynamic levels are to be kept throughout the piece.

Canyons by Thomas Osborne, page 1

Robert Pollock and I discussed this and other works on Kaoi Radio recently.

Here’s the 25 minute audio clip.

Tonight’s concert is FREE — and expected to draw a standing-room only audience. My only regret is that we get to perform each piece just once — tonight.

Piano Synergy! Concert, 14th July 2012 at 7:30 pm at the Maui Music Conservatory, 2nd floor of the very centrally located Queen Ka’ahumanu Shopping Mall in Kahului, on Maui, Hawaii. We begin with a work of John Cage and end with Darius Milhaud’s Paris.

The highlight of the evening will surely be Thomas Osborne’s “Canyons.”

Canyons by Thomas Osborne bars 84 to 87

Paris by Darius Milhaud

The Paris of French composer Darius Milhaud in 1948 is captured in his 4 piano music for 4 pianists. I asked my friend Joe Goldiamond, who has lived in Paris, to write about each of the areas which title the movements of this work. He has always spoken fondly of Paris, a romantic city I was fortunate enough to visit as a 21-year-old backpacker through Europe, on holiday as a graduate student, day trip for a job interview, blind date, conferences & meetings, winter rendezvous with friend from Houston, and the last occasion in Summer 2009. I can’t wait to share his descriptions with the audience on Maui on Saturday 14th July 2012. [The bracketed comments are mine, after our 8th July rehearsal.]

Montmartre

Montmartre sits on a hillside in the northernmost part of the city and has a 2,000 year-old history as an independent village known for its windmills and vineyards.  Annexed by Paris in the late 19^th century, it quickly became home for artists, poets and revolutionaries who were attracted by its tolerant atmosphere, its buoyant nightlife, and by the beauty of its winding, narrow cobblestone streets, often with steep inclines, that may lead suddenly to small squares and fountains and gardens. [You can hear the scales, which I think depict the steps and paths.]

L’ Isle St. Louis      

The Isle St. Louis is a natural island in the River Seine right in the heart of Paris.  Yet, it feels far away and on Sunday mornings, when the island is shrouded in mist that rolls in from the river and the only sound you hear is that of a church bell, you might easily imagine yourself in rural France, 400 years ago.  It was the home of the Polish composer and pianist, Frederic Chopin.  The quays, which embrace the entire island, are legendary as lovers’ promenades. [You can hear the tenuto notes representing the bells of the Notre Dame.]

Montparnasse

Montparnasse became the heart of Paris’s artistic and intellectual life after the first decade of the 20^th century.  Located deep on the Left Bank, the area is a broad plain gathered around the boulevard Montparnasse, which today, as much as yesterday, blends bookstores and nightlife, cafés and crepe restaurants.  The stroller will still find legendary cafés, such as Le Dome and La Rotonde, where painters, sculptors, writers and philosophers from across the globe gathered to mold thoughts and debate ideas. [This piece is full of conversations, ideas, and thoughts criss-crossing each other. The biggest movement by far.]

Les Bateaux-Mouches

The Bateaux-Mouches are long, slender boats that have carried visitors on tours through the heart of Paris since the end of the 19^th century.  The visitor experiences a leisurely adventure and gentle breeze as his boat glides past Notre Dame Cathedral, the Louvre Museum and the Tuileries Gardens and under historic bridges.  He may also sense what the waters of the Seine have always meant to Paris, as its main artery, and some would say, its soul. [In 12/8 time, you feel the sway of the boat on the water, nice and relaxed!]

Longchamp

The Longchamp Racecourse is located along the banks of the Seine in a wooded area in western Paris.  From the time of Napoleon III and across La Belle Epoque into the early 20^th century, it was the kind of place that you went to in a top hat, if you were a man, and carrying a parasol, if you were not.  Even the thoroughbred horses had an understated elegance, along with power, in the masterly paintings of Edouard Manet and Edgar Degas. [This is a fugue, which means chase. You can literally hear the parts can't wait to imitate each other, more like chasing each other!]

La Tour Eiffel

The Eiffel Tower is the tallest structure in France, the most visited monument in the world, and the universal symbol of Paris.  If the islands in the River Seine are the city’s heart, and the river its soul, then the Eiffel Tower is the city’s intelligence.  Constructed of iron lattice, like Parisian balconies, it was considered an impossible feat until it was done.  It was completed in 1889, in time for the World’s Fair, which was held to celebrate the centennial of the French Revolution, an event we commemorate this evening. [As the last movement, this is grand and triumphant, rising high like the tower itself! Lots of octaves!]

Wanted: home for a Steinway

My relocation to the Netherlands in 2003/2004 coincided with a refund of monies from Singapore. It was a milestone for change.

Frustrated by the daily challenge of finding a good piano to practise at the conservatory in Utrecht and the inadequate upright piano at home in Bussum, I decided to find a grand piano of my own.

First I visited the local piano shop whose owner led me to a room full of Yamahas. I could not find a piano that was special enough to be different. I abandoned the idea of a Yamaha and went for a Steinway instead. The story of how I found that piano and the piano technician who helped me negotiate the price is an interesting one, perhaps for another blog post. He did request that I visit his atelier after I got back from Taiwan. A month later, the French polished, restrung Steinway grand arrived in Bussum.

It was a glorious moment — to finally have a Steinway Grand Piano in my home. The Steinway was not from Hamburg but from New York. Made in 1909. All 188 CM of it. Model A. Ivory keys. One celebrated concert pianist, Dutch winner of the Liszt Piano Competition who commuted between Vienna and Utrecht, remarked that it was a Rachmaninoff piano for it had that romantic sound.

Here’s how the Steinway sounds: Intermezzo by Allan Segall, performed by Anne Ku, recorded by Robert Bekkers.

I held a Steinway Warming party for my piano friends. With the upright piano, four pianists could play on both pianos. We tried all sorts of duets.

Once I got accustomed to being the proud owner of a Steinway, it was time to let go of my Gerhard Adam, a German mahogany grand piano from the 1920′s which I left behind in London. I wrote a decision making guide to buying a second-hand piano to help sell that piano online. Once again I walked down my memory lane of buying a piano. I wrote an Adieu which used all 88 keys on the piano, a way for me to say goodbye thru the new owner I did not meet.

Here is a recording of my playing on my Steinway. Adieu to a Piano by Anne Ku

Steinway Grand Model A 188cm, 1909 New York, before recording session

In summer 2006, the Steinway moved with me to Utrecht. We launched the Monument House Concert Series with a violin and guitar concert by Duo 46. That December we chose the theme Piano as Orchestra, featuring several concertos (harp, euphonium, guitar). The following year we combined food with music in Chamber Music Tapas Style. Every year we committed to organizing two house concerts. Often we had several mini concerts, including a kitchen concert, garden concert, impromptu concert. Each time we became more adventurous and more professional. We outsourced food and wine to professional chefs and wine sommeliers. We included art exhibitions.

On my last trip back to the Netherlands, I felt compelled to host two concerts back to back. Despite being time-challenged with only 2.5 months to sort out my things, I felt it was important to organize these concerts for two American pianists on their way to the Italian alps. Why? Maybe instinctively I knew it was the last time my grand piano would be heard in a concert setting. Sure enough, 2nd July 2011 became the last house concert.

And the last recordings were that of piano duets I had collected from a Call for Scores from Hawaii to Holland. Here’s Brendan Kinsella and I playing my late composition teacher Henk Alkema’s piece.

APPEAL:

This Steinway Grand, made in New York in 1909, model A – 188 cm – needs a home. SALE. RENT. or LOAN.

Steinway for Sale with new photos and sound clips.

Interested parties please use the LEAVE A REPLY field below.

Steinway Grand at the Monument House, Utrecht

Sweet Pain

Googling oneself always yields surprises. There’s a young pianist named “Annie Ku” who won a piano competition. There’s a violinist named “Anne Ku.”

And then there’s “Robert Bekkers” whose youtube clips show our duo and trios. But here’s one that I’ve not seen before.

Harry is the singer. Gaston, the recording engineer in Belgium. And Robert Bekkers, the guitarist.

Independence Day

It’s 4th of July 2012 — my first in the USA in many years. The tweets I’m getting not only celebrate Independence Day but also energy independence. Wean ourselves off oil and gasoline. Welcome electric cars!

In thinking about independence, I also think about words like co-dependence. Financial independence. Emotional independence or detachment.

Are we ever really independent?

In chamber music, each instrument is an independent entity, producing an independent sound. The combined result, however, relies heavily on blending. This blending of independent sounds requires each musician to listen to each other and adjust to each other.

When we first started rehearsing Morton Feldman’s music for several pianos, we were only told to start together (the same note) and try to end together after 7 minutes. Although we were all following the same score, we decided on when and how long to play each note. We more or less tried to listen to each other to make sure we didn’t all play at the same time (after the first note). Ironically, at our last rehearsal, we were told that the composer did not want us to listen to each other at all. He did not want us to be affected by what others played, only to start at the same time and end after 7 minutes. We all had to play softly, so that the music sounded like echoes or ripples.

As for electric cars, by weaning ourselves off gasoline, we become dependent on electricity, which is generated from several other energy sources. Do we become more independent or dependent? At least we are not throwing all our eggs in one basket, ….. but in several baskets.