Piano World’s Passport to Europe
Piano enthusiasts go on a magical musical tour of Germany and Austria
by Jackie Tortora
It’s no secret that pianists can’t resist the urge to play if there’s a piano in the room. That is why, when Frank Baxter was planning a group piano factory tour in Germany and Austria, it was imperative that the participants could try out the merchandise at each stop.
“I asked if we could have the opportunity to play the finished pianos,” says Baxter, 59, founder and president of the website Piano World (www.pianoworld.com). “We’re kind of like kids in a candy store.”
Baxter, a resident of Largo, Florida, says Piano World’s forum is a space for recreational and professional pianists to meet. Its members organize factory tours, concerts, dinners, and piano parties where they convene with other members from all over the US. Through the forum, Baxter found 25 people who wanted to go on a 12-day piano tour of Germany and Austria.
“I came up with the idea because we had done some other local tours, like to the piano maker Mason & Hamlin in Massachusetts, and we even put together a piano cruise out of Miami,” says Baxter. “We figured the next step would be something on a bigger scale—Europe, where some of the best piano manufacturers are.”
Baxter put feelers out in the Piano World forums and started collecting a group of takers for the June 2011 trip. He then contacted a German tour company and called some piano manufacturers and museums in Germany and Austria, and things began to fall into place.
Bobbie Brooks, 60, of Gloucester, Massachusetts, signed up for the trip through Piano World. A horticulturist and former church organist, she returned to piano five years ago after a 20-year hiatus. The piano tour was her first trip abroad.
“We saw where Beethoven was born and where he was an assistant organist at age 11. Then, we saw another church where Beethoven was an organist at age 14,” says Brooks. “We had the most wonderful tour guide, Günter. He designed the whole trip for us around the theme of music.”
The group traveled by bus, beginning their journey in Hamburg, Germany, where they toured the Steinway & Sons Factory. The itinerary also included Bösendorfer in Vienna, Austria; Blüthner Piano in Leipzig, Germany; and the Steingraeber & Sohne in Bayreuth, Germany. Other highlights of the tour were cathedrals, castles, and opera houses. They even saw the Austrian church where the wedding scene in the Sound of Music was filmed. While the group enjoyed seeing how the instruments were made, they were even more interested in playing the finished products at the end of the factory tours.
“Every one of us absolutely loves to play the piano,” says Barbara Wadsworth, Baxter’s sister. “We just love the piano and we don’t care what year or what type it is. There was always a mad dash to see who could get to the piano first at any place where they said we could play.”
Wadsworth, 71, is a retired supervisor for Holland America Cruise Lines. After taking a 60-year break from music, she now plays her Yamaha keyboard every day. Because most people were pianists, or at least had a strong interest in music, there was an instant camaraderie among the travelers.
“Everyone listened respectfully as each person played,” she says. “Watching people run up to an instrument that was made so long ago, sit down, and play; you could tell they were just in this other world. We would all take turns. It’s just wonderful to share that with people.”
Although Wadsworth says she was too bashful to play in front of others, she did play in a private room at the Steingraeber factory, while Brooks had the chance to play a Steingraeber antique piano from circa 1900 in a recital room at the factory.
“Everyone who did play was glad they did,” recalls Wadsworth. “One lady on the tour said, ‘How many chances can you get to play a piano that Franz Liszt played, or in a museum where they unlock the instruments and say, go ahead, play?’”
Baxter says the enthusiastic piano players were just itching to get their hands on the instruments, and he made sure everyone who wanted to play, got a chance.
“Sometimes we had four or five pianos playing at a time,” he says. “It was great to sit down at a freshly minted piano and play to your heart’s content.”
Whoever was feeling the most courageous at the time would play first, explains Baxter. Sometimes the age of pianos available would determine who would play. When antique pianos were on hand, a person with an affinity for classical music would play. If they were in a factory with modern pianos, the pianists who prefer rock took their turns.
“Each person had their own style,” says Baxter. “I’m a rock and roll, blues, ragtime, and jazz piano player.”
Because of the industry connections Piano World has with piano manufacturers and museums, the group had a lot of special privileges individuals wouldn’t normally have. For example, at the Steingraeber Factory, the group listened to a concert pianist at the end of the tour, then they were handed glasses of champagne from Udo Steingraeber, the owner, and allowed to “run loose” in the piano showroom.
At WDR, a famous German public radio station, the group had an exclusive tour of the antique instruments and pianos owned by the station that date back to the 1790s, and were allowed to play them. Normally, the public doesn’t even get to see the collection.
Piano World members were thrilled to meet their European counterparts. In a hotel restaurant in Germany, Baxter chatted with a pianist and singer, and found out that he was a member of Piano World. “We were halfway across the world and we met a piano player who is one of our members,” says Baxter. “It’s a small world.”
Initially, Baxter says some Piano World members hesitated to sign up for the trip because they thought it was just a piano tour, or they would be bored with factories. “But it was a European tour built around the theme of pianos and music,” says Baxter. He and his girlfriend, Kathy Ford, had never traveled outside the US before. “We saw cathedrals, castles, palaces, and composers’ homes. We walked the same floorboards as Beethoven and I got this weird feeling to know he walked there. Kathy said that, when she put her hands on the plastic covering on Beethoven’s piano, she felt a tingling—like his aura was there,” he says.
Even when they weren’t touring piano factories or composers’ homes, the Piano World group always managed to find a piano. On a side trip to the BMW headquarters, Baxter spotted a Steinway Grand displayed on a platform in the middle of the car showroom.
“We all gravitated towards it,” says Baxter. “It had a sign that said, ‘Don’t touch, don’t play,’ but I asked an employee if we could play it since we were from the Piano World group and we had traveled all the way from the US.”
Once Baxter got permission to play, a crowd gathered as he tinkered away on the Steinway. “People stopped and listened in the showroom,” says Baxter. “After I stopped playing, I looked around and joked, ‘Oh yeah, they have cars too.’”
In one of the hotels in Nuremberg, Germany, Baxter asked the concierge where the hotel’s piano was. It was locked away in a meeting room upstairs, but the staff agreed to open the room for them and even set up chairs so the group could gather and listen to each other play.
“As a piano player, I can’t go many days without playing, even when traveling,” says Baxter. When they weren’t touring factories, Baxter scoped out the local area for pianos in hotels or restaurants. “I’m one of those people that, if there’s a piano within 50 feet of me, I will play it. I can’t resist it. I can tell you, any place where there was an opportunity to play the piano, it did not go unfulfilled.”
For more photos of the tour, and to read participant comments about the trip, visit the Piano World Forums (www.pianoworld.com/forum).
