Last week, 27-year-old Eric Lu from Massachusetts became the first American to win the International Chopin Piano Competition since 1970. Chinese pianist Tianyao Lyu was an impressive runner up. Tired of winning yet? Maybe if we win the trade war against China…
Some of you reading this might have a little boy or a little girl who’s showing some musical talent, and you want to buy him or her a piano. That might be a little difficult right now. Back in May, Gary Gordon blogged for the Riverton Piano Company that
The recent tariffs imposed by the United States government have already begun to impact the piano business. Yamaha has announced a price increase on all their products, Roland announced that they will no longer include a bench with their pianos and companies like Casio (who build nearly everything they sell in China and are currently facing a disastrous 145% tariff) have fallen silent. Even American piano makers are being affected!
Surely the tariffs are encouraging American piano manufacturers to step up and produce more pianos for Americans to buy. Well, according to Gordon… no, that’s not happening.
Even a piano that is “made in the USA” is not made entirely from materials sourced in the United States. [emphasis from the original] Woods for the piano’s construction may come from many different countries – especially if a certain species of wood is required for a specific function or if the wood is used in exotic finishes. ... To keep prices down, many modern piano builders buy soundboard wood from Canada, Europe, and Asia. It’s the same with piano keys actions, case parts and much more. So, if US tariffs artificially inflate the prices of foreign wood and force US piano builders to buy locally, they will have to increase their prices and eliminate select finishes like rosewood and bubinga ... Even then, there are some components they just can’t get in the United States. Today’s piano business is a global one. No matter how you look at it, even American piano manufacturers will have to pay higher prices for parts and materials as a result of these tariffs.
This is going to make it difficult to get a piano for your little Eric Lu or your little Tianyao Lyu. The tariffs
will significantly increase prices for beginner and entry-level models. Low price pianos are almost exclusively made in China and are precisely the models the piano instrument industry relies on to create its future consumer base. Most piano shoppers start with a less expensive piano and upgrade as their student improves. …but what if less expensive pianos aren’t available anymore? Will fewer people take lessons because they can’t afford a piano? [emphasis from the original]
And
we’re already seeing dozens of small Chinese piano makers close up shop and it’s inevitable that we’ll see more. Worse yet, many of the survivors will stop importing into the US. This will likely cripple the low-price piano market here in the US. Not only will entry (and mid-level) pianos be less affordable but they may be impossible for Americans to purchase at all!
Gordon predicts that Bosendorfer and Yamaha will be able to weather this silly trade war, since their products are subject to tariffs that are a little less idiotic. If this goes on for much longer, it
will destroy entire segments of the piano business and force most first-time buyers to buy digital pianos or less attractive used pianos (while supplies last). It could mean the end of some of our favorite piano brands. Of course, this doesn’t have to go on forever. If both governments commit to solving this problem, it could be over in a matter of weeks! We can only hope that cooler heads will prevail and the parties involved will find a less damaging way to express their differences.
“Cooler heads”? “A less damaging way to express their differences”? That’s either very naïve or very diplomatic. And it doesn’t help that one of the heads had a “perfect” MRI at Walter Reed because some fear he might lose the ability to tell the difference between a lion, a camel and a rhinoceros..
In the blog post, Gordon doesn’t consider the possibility that we could invent some kind of modern twist on the clavichord. We believe that as a child, Ludwig van Beethoven practiced on a clavichord, a small instrument that can be noisy in a small, quiet room but might have trouble projecting in a concert hall.
That clavichord must have had a very limited range, presenting a challenge even for Beethoven’s earliest piano sonatas. The first few bars of Beethoven’s Piano Sonata No. 4 in E-flat major, Opus 7 should fit comfortably on any clavichord. But by the ninth bar, you’ve probably run out of keys.
The Opus 7 may very well be Beethoven’s very first piano sonata in E-flat major, but it certainly wasn’t going to be his last. I like No. 18 much better, but Beethoven is always interesting.
To my knowledge, Eric Lu hasn’t recorded any Beethoven piano sonatas yet, though he has recorded Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 4 in G major.
So for the sonata I’m going to go with Hyung-Min Suh instead of Eric Lu, the video courtesy of classical radio station WQXR. Suh is also an American pianist who has been in the Chopin competition, doing better than most. Also, wait a minute... he was accused of sexually harassing a classmate at Juilliard? Or maybe he was falsely accused, since the charges were dropped? But Juilliard did not allow him to re-enroll?
Okay, I have to look for another pianist.
Jin Uk Kim has done decent at competitions and as far as I can tell neither him nor his Googlegänger Kim Jin-uk have had to make deals with prosecutors. So here we go, Jin Uk Kim in Beethoven’s Piano Sonata No. 4 in E-flat major, Opus 7.
Well, I guess I better not try to trammel this one too much. Please feel free to talk about the tariffs on pianos, the International Chopin Piano Competition, whether or not Tianyao Lyu was robbed, Hyung-Min Suh’s reproachable character, the Beethoven sonata, etc.
