Tickling the ivories (and music lovers’ fancy) at the relocated Steinway showroom in Old Greenwich

Since its founding in 1853 in lower Manhattan by German-born piano maker Heinrich Engelhard Steinweg (anglicized as Henry E. Steinway), the company Steinway & Sons has come to define the pianistic experience, with 80% of the market.

Now owned by billionaire hedge funder John Paulson, Steinway made “$538 million in sales (in 2021), with $59 million in profit, up 13% from the prior year,” according to Fast Company. 

Classical artists such as Lang Lang, Yuja Wang and South Salem’s Hélène Grimaud, pop stars Lady Gaga and Harry Connick Jr. and jazz musician Jon Batiste are among the many who perform exclusively on Steinways, while designers ranging from Irvington’s Louis Comfort Tiffany to Karl Lagerfeld have created cases for the instrument.

Today, there are 35 Steinway showrooms globally with 16 in the United States. Among those showrooms is one in Connecticut – located for 15 years in Westport, then six in downtown Greenwich and, since Sept. 4, in a 3,300-square-foot space off East Putnam Avenue on Havemeyer Street in the town’s Old Greenwich neighborhood.

“We loved Greenwich Avenue. We love being in Greenwich,” said showroom manager Sarah Venditti.

The new locale, with floor-to-ceiling windows above A.T. Proudian carpets and rugs, allows for a recital space but also for a more expansive setting for the six sizes of grand pianos and one size of uprights. The sizes include the S (5 feet, 1 inch long); M (5 feet, 7 inches); the O (5 feet 10 ½ inches); the A (6 feet, 2 inches); the B (7 feet) and the D (9 feet). The larger the piano, the more resonant the sound – crucial for a Steinway, which Venditti said is distinguished by its tonal richness, color variations and dynamic range.

But nowadays, clients of the Greenwich showroom are not necessarily looking only to play the instrument themselves or at all. Enter the best-selling Spirio, which comes in the M, B and D sizes. Introduced in 2016 after 20 years of development, the Spirio is, she added, “an acoustic piano with electronic components that recreate performances as they happened, either live or in recording.”

We listened as Venditti, using the Spirio’s accompanying iPad and Bluetooth technology, called up Sergei Rachmaninoff’s “Daisies” and Duke Ellington’s “Satin Doll.” There was something poignant and eerie, as well as enchanting, in hearing works performed by these long-passed composers, the keyboard coming alive in ghostly fashion. There was also something illustrative of our age of passive entertainment.

But Venditti noted that the Spirio technology enables listeners to hear pieces like “Daisies” that they might never before have encountered – there are 4,658 across genres, with three to four hours’ worth of additional music arriving on the first Friday of every month to the Spirio’s iPad playlist – as well as performances of their idols rendered intimately. Venditti remembered one woman sitting down at a Steinway Spirio to listen to Vladimir Horowitz.

“She said, ‘This is as close as I can be to hearing Horowitz play a piece,’” Venditti recalled. “It was very moving to her.”

Plus, the Steinway Spirio doesn’t just play itself. It lets you play and archive livestreamed performances while the Spirio-r enables you to record music as well.

With ingenuity also comes a lacquered beauty that tempts you to caress it. The Steinway’s rims are made of hard rock maple with a finish of paraffinated polyester. The piano’s belly includes a cast iron plate, which holds the tension of the strings – despite these, the piano is actually a percussion instrument – that is made by O.S. Kelly Co., a Steinway-owned foundry in Springfield, Ohio. Underneath the plate is the soundboard made of Alaskan sitka spruce.

While most Steinways – the company has made more than 600,000 – have that ebony diamond gloss, you can choose from a variety of finishes. There are white Steinways for the Palm Beach set and a limited edition of 50 Gran Nichettos like the Model B Spirio-r in Midnight Red, a kind of rich burgundy, by multidisciplinary designer Luca Nichetto. There are 25 Mickey Mouse-adorned Steinways for Disney buffs and one whose design recreates Claude Monet’s “Water Lilies.” Since the 1870s, Steinways have been made in an Astoria, Queens, factory – there’s a smaller factory in Hamburg, Germany, – and take a year to produce.

All this variety, beauty and ingenuity comes with a hefty price tag:  A Steinway starts at $53,000. Steinway designs and engineers two other more affordable lines – the Boston, made in Japan, starting at $10,000; and the Essex, made in China, the No. 1 piano market, starting at $7,000. You can also purchase a pre-owned and rebuilt Steinway, Venditti added.

Still, we’re in luxury and collectible car territory as far as costs go. The Model D Spirio-r that dominates the concert space of the Old Greenwich showroom retails for $271,000. Venditti, who studied piano performance at Ithaca College, sat down at this keyboard and treated us to a lovely, impromptu performance of Claude Debussy’s “First Arabesque,” her fingers gently teasing out the Impressionistic sounds of the composition.

“Mozart would’ve loved this place,” we exclaimed. To which Venditti replied, “I like that.”

Steinway & Sons is at 1545 E. Putnam Ave. Hours are 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Tuesdays through Saturdays. For more, call 203-227-8222 or visit steinwayct.com.