Piano 64

This piano was captured in the Clore Ballroom opposite the Long Bar at the Festival Hall, a place we stop at from time to time for a winter picnic. A piano which seemed very long in the flesh.

I had a bit of trouble getting the cover off the keyboard and I was afraid that a trusty might interfere, but I was OK. I wonder now whether the trusty would have responded to my line about collecting pianos, very much in the way of a trainspotter. Matter of luck I suppose, with some being more officious than others.

I had thought that I had come across a Bösendorfer piano before, but search of the archive fails to turn one up, with or with the umlaut.

Reading all about what is clearly a very respectable brand at reference 3, I learn that it is now owned by Yamaha. Which made me think that I had come across this before, but search of the archive suggests that what I had come across before was a large Chinese piano manufacturer buying up European manufacturers for marketing purposes. See reference 4. So maybe this really is the first Bösendorfer.

But, at the time of capture, we were much more interested in whether the Clore Ballroom ever had been used for balls, in the pre-war sense of the word, with ball gowns, penguin suits and a band. The story from Bing this morning seems to be that there certainly is dancing there, maybe even 'strictly ballroom', but no ball gowns and penguin suits that I could see. Perhaps they get no nearer the damp of the river than the ballroom of the Dorchester Hotel in Park Lane. Perhaps for some suitably opulent charity flavoured bash.

This last snap, taken from reference 2, might come in handy next time I try to decipher the reflected view of the interior of the Wigmore Steinway you get on the underside of the propped open lid. A trick I have yet to manage. In the hope and expectation that the interiors of the two brands look much the same.

PS: I am reminded that Simenon uses the word officieuse quite often, a word which is related but which has a quite different meaning from our officious. 

References

Reference 1: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2022/10/piano-63.html.

Reference 2: https://www.boesendorfer.com/en/. They seem to have got the spelling wrong.

Reference 3: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B%C3%B6sendorfer.

Reference 4: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2022/07/piano-60.html.

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