Viñoly's Piano
This week’s performance of Beethoven’s “Emperor” concerto at Carnegie Hall on a curved-keyboard piano caught my interest.
The performer was Jonathan Biss backed by the New York String Orchestra.
The piano was the Maene-Viñoly Concert Grand, named for its makers - architect Rafael Viñoly and master piano builder Chris Maene.
What is so special about this piano?
Look closely at the above image.
The instrument’s keyboard arcs to match the sweep of a pianist’s arms as they rotate, intended to require less effort to play across all registers than a straight keyboard.
The new layout extends beyond the keyboard, to the strings as they fan out over a wider soundboard than on a standard piano. This was not so much “designed in” as it was “kept” to improve the instrument’s capacity for nuance and clarity.
Viñoly’s contribution is pretty clear in the new packaging of this instrument.
His name is familiar to me from his work in Princeton, NJ (he designed Princeton University Stadium/Powers Field, and also the Carl Icahn Laboratory/Lewis-Sigler Institute for Integrative Genomics).
I first learned about Viñoly in Tokyo, where he designed the Tokyo International Forum (aka, “the TIF”), a modern space in Marunouchi in which I have participated in more than one “Tokyo Ad:Tech” conference.
To get the next-gen piano project started, Viñoly and Maene collaborated with a piano kinematics researcher and a piano instructor to lay down the keyboard’s ideal arc.
To keep it moving, they received encouragement from some of the instruments best-known performers including Martha Argerich and Daniel Barenboim.
It took six years to go from idea to object, and now here it is. It seems like a long time, but remember it takes a lot of practice to get to Carnegie Hall.
I can’t wait to hear it. Or maybe try it? For now, the reviews and photographs will have to suffice.
More about the Maene-Viñoly Concert Grand here ...
https://www.chrismaene.be/the-maene-vinoly-concert-grand/
https://vinoly.com/article/introducing-maene-violy-concert-grand-piano/
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/28/nyregion/piano-curved-keyboard-carnegie-hall.html
PS. In our house, we love to speculate that Rafael Viñoly also built the “world’s nicest Wawa” at the Princeton University train station. The one with the grass roof. But I’m not sure that’s true (bc it was Rick Joy who designed the station and store). I think we might have made that story up so that we can talk/think about Viñoly more often.
