But you still need to activate your account.
2,000; 760; 7; 4; 1; 1922; 150,000.
Seemingly random, these numbers have become celebrated – if quietly – by the School of the Performing Arts at the University of Maine since the arrival late last year of a Steinway & Sons Model B grand piano at Minsky Recital Hall on the Orono campus.
The hand-crafted instrument has 12,000 pieces, weighs 760 pounds, is nearly 7 feet long and will be played by the four members of the piano faculty, thanks to one man – Richard B. Pacquette – who attended UMaine for one year in 1922.
When he died in Chicago in 2003, Pacquette, who grew up in Portland and eventually graduated from Bowdoin College, left $150,000 to the art and music programs at UMaine. A third of that money went to the university’s art gallery in downtown Bangor, a third to the restoration of Lord Hall (which will eventually house an art collection) and a third went toward the purchase of the $60,000 Steinway concert piano.
“We were ecstatic that we had this opportunity,” said Tom Cavanaugh, Pacquette’s nephew and only living relative.
Cavanaugh graduated from the UMaine art department in 1973 and, since 1976, has been the owner, with his wife Cynthia, of the Best Bib & Tucker, a clothing story in Bangor. Cavanaugh said he was about 3 years old the last time he saw his uncle, and they were not in touch in the intervening years. A call from a Chicago hospital last winter tracked down Cavanaugh as next of kin to his ailing uncle, but a month later, Pacquette died at the age of 93.
Seventy percent of his estate went to charitable and educational institutions including UMaine and Bowdoin. Pacquette’s own 1908 Steinway Model D – the largest in the Steinway lineup – and his considerable collection of sheet music were auctioned off.
While Pacquette remains somewhat of a mystery, even to his nephew, the new piano clearly represents the man’s passion for music.
“We were at the opening presentation in January, and the piano sounded wonderful,” said Cavanaugh, who was asked by UM administrators to help distribute the money. “Everybody who played it said it was like night and day from the old piano there. Each one in their own way said it was like their own personal piano. It spoke to them.”
The Model B, which is the university’s first concert piano purchase in more than 25 years, spoke first to UM assistant professor of music Phillip Silver, who was elected by his colleagues to choose a model from the Steinway showroom at M. Steinert and Sons, the authorized Steinway dealer in Boston.
“It certainly was memorable when Phillip Silver fell in love with that piano,” said Marjorie Cooperman, director of institutional sales at Steinert. “I work with people who have a serious responsibility to select a piano that everyone else will play on and like. It’s often a once-in-a-career selection, and there’s a lot of personally felt responsibility. So the moment a person falls in love with a choice is a great moment, a celebratory moment.”
Each year, about 150 pianos are purchased through this selection process, according to Steinway & Sons, which was founded in Manhattan in 1853 by Henry Engelhard Steinway, a German immigrant. But if you add in sales at the approximately 80 dealerships around the country, that number quadruples, said Cooperman. It takes about a year to make a Steinway, and more than 3,000 – in a variety of models – are sold each year.
“I found this piano was capable of doing things, showing things and illuminating dark corners,” said Silver. “An instrument is a medium, and some mediums you have to work at. Others, you become an adjunct of the instrument. I sit at that piano and I don’t even think about playing. It offers a tremendous amount of transparency. It’s a thrill to play.”
Silver has already played several chamber concerts on the new instrument. For one, he was joined by his wife, a cellist, for a program that included Beethoven and Brahms.
“It is music I have played for many years,” said Noreen Silver. “Although I know it very well, there were things I was hearing as if for the first time.”
She quickly added: “As a cellist, you usually have to work very hard to project with a piano – even though musically you’re on equal terms. With this piano, I felt we really were on equal terms. It never dominated or swamped my sound.”
While every Steinway is made with the exact same specifications for a particular model, the tonal outcome – dark or bright – involves an element of surprise. “While they are made the same, each has a distinct personality,” said Sally Coveleskie, director of institutional sales at Steinway & Sons. “That’s why Steinways are selected.” Selected rather than simply purchased, that is.
The new UM piano, according to those who have played it, is bright, which is in direct contrast to the darkness of the Model D already in the department, but greatly in need of reconditioning.
Baycka Voronietsky, a UM music professor and concert pianist, said the Model B has a “wonderful touch.”
“It’s perfect for collaboration with a soloist,” she said. “Mozart will sound gorgeous. So will light pieces. It’s more like a pianoforte. Phillip plays the piano every week, and to play on the old, big piano is hard. We needed a tamer sound. It’s ideal for that.”
While the piano is being gently broken in during this first year, it will be available only to Silver and three other UM piano instructors, including Voronietsky, as well as piano performance majors for recitals. Otherwise, it is kept under lock and key in a wooden box specially outfitted with temperature and humidity controls.
The old Model D, which is 9 feet long, may only temporarily be usurped by the new kid on the block, however. Faculty members are hoping to raise the $12,000 needed to restore it.
Silver, who seems to be the unofficial caretaker for the new piano, has the instrument booked for five practice hours a week, the maximum he can schedule when the concert hall isn’t engaged by the students from the School of Performing Arts.
“But it’s not enough,” he said with a smile. “I tried to get them to put it in my office, but they wouldn’t listen to me.”
Having the instrument has refocused Silver on his own work as a concert pianist. “It has given me back what I had lost,” he said.
Numerically speaking, that comes out to a bright 88 keys.
Alicia Anstead can be reached at 990-8266 or aanstead@bangordailynews.net.
Comments
comments for this post are closed