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Possession of a piano has at all times had a free connection to wealth and sophistication: they aren’t low cost; they take up worthwhile house in a house; and studying to play requires a lot time and dedication.
So, because the economies of the east Asia grew quickly within the latter half of the twentieth century, home demand for grands, child grands and upright pianos surged. Earlier than lengthy, China turned the world’s piano manufacturing facility — shopping for up European companies and producing first rate devices on an enormous scale.
Even UK makers of high-quality pianos, corresponding to Edelweiss, primarily based simply outdoors Cambridge, got here to rely largely on elements being shipped from the east Asia — just because the abilities required to make them extra domestically had vanished.
“Going again 100 years or so, the British was fairly good at it,” says Edelweiss’s artistic director Mark Norman, whose father based the enterprise as a piano restoration agency within the mid Nineteen Seventies. “However, now, round 80 per cent of the world’s piano elements are sourced within the far east.”
Edelweiss, like different piano makers, got here to depend on the imports. “If the containers of elements arrived recurrently, it was a reasonably good system,” Norman says. “We have been about to fly out to China with a view to increasing our relationship [with Chinese factories] when Covid hit. Our flights have been cancelled. We have been fairly glad we didn’t go, as we’d by no means have gotten dwelling once more.”
This was not only a postponed enterprise assembly, nevertheless. China, in impact, stopped exporting throughout that stage of the pandemic, fully disrupting Edelweiss’s provide chain. “We have been in a lucky place in that we’d simply ordered numerous elements and we have been stocked up,” recollects Norman. “But when they shut down for 2 years, or if it occurred once more, what would we do?”
The agency had been nervous about this sort of eventuality for various years and had contemplated the opportunity of making a piano completely sourced and constructed within the UK. Up till then, Norman had resisted, contemplating it a near-impossible process.
“The prospect was daunting,” he says. “However we needed to safe a high-quality provide chain that wasn’t going to present us these issues, and clearly it will be fascinating when it comes to carbon footprint.”
Whereas many years spent restoring and constructing pianos to excessive requirements had geared up Edelweiss with a wealth of expertise, its workers truly had little information of find out how to make the instrument’s constituent elements. The corporate subsequently employed a revered American piano designer, Delwin Fandrich, to place collectively drawings for a brand new mannequin, which the agency envisioned as being the smallest grand piano on the planet.
“Edelweiss took on a mission that few corporations — even a lot bigger ones — are prepared to think about,” says Fandrich. “Constructing any piano is a formidable process, however constructing one in-house to an all-new design much more so.”
After the design was established, the agency began sounding out potential suppliers. “Initially, we didn’t inform them what the mission was,” says Norman. “We actually wished to see how passionate they have been, as we consider that, if you happen to’re engaged on an instrument, you aren’t simply doing a job. You’re making a piano, it’s a must to go the additional mile to make it higher.”
Enthused by the response, Edelweiss determined to make the leap, sending out authorized non-disclosure agreements to ensure confidentiality, then revealing their full plan to the popular companies.
One of the crucial important components was the piano’s body. It’s historically forged in iron — which requires a prolonged means of mould making, adjustment, and but extra mould making. Edelweiss couldn’t discover a foundry in a position to produce the forged iron it wished, however was capable of finding a provider who might reduce it from metal. Then, the makers needed to experiment with welding and bolting to supply a body that might go stringent stress exams. Nonetheless, the motion (the mechanism that brings the hammers into contact with the strings) proved one problem too many; it was just too complicated to make from scratch.
“You must do 1000’s of exams on every key,” explains Norman. “The event course of and high quality management could be exacting and it will be very, very tough to make any cash. So, for this piano we’re utilizing a carbon fibre composite motion from the USA, which could be very good, we’re getting good outcomes from it.”
General, the method from design to the completed piano took three years; Norman estimates the monetary price as someplace between £100,000 and £200,000 “which from one perspective isn’t too dangerous, however from one other is quite loads”.
However regardless of the exact outlay, it has left Edelweiss with a novel product — a lot cherished by pianists — and in a a lot stronger place.
“I wouldn’t say we have been bulletproof,” says Norman. “However my father was at all times an innovator and, if he was nonetheless round, I believe he’d be actually happy with what we’ve finished.”
