Smoke Rings From Baldwin

Seated one day at a piano recital in Manhattan's Town Hall, a musician in the audience nudged his companion.

The piano tone from the stage, he whis pered, was remarkably rich and resonant. "Why can't I get a piano like that when I go to Steinway?" he grumbled.

Replied his companion: "Because this one came from Baldwin."

That was a surprise. Baldwin has for years made excellent pianos for both the concert stage and home. But although used by many orchestras and some solo ists, the Baldwin has never been the first choice of most top concert pianists, who complain that its sound, instead of ringing out, dies away with a metallic clunk and bogs down their tonal flights.

The pre-eminent piano has been the Steinway, which at its best has a soar ing, singing tone and a delicately responsive action.

Leading performers get terribly emo tional about their instruments (which the manufacturers lend out for concert use in exchange for the prestige that the pianists bring). Glenn Gould always played Steinway's No. 174; when it collapsed some years back, he was thrown into a deep depression. Gary Graffman, Eugene Istomin, Jacob Lateiner and Leon Fleisher at one time all craved Old 199, and they passed it around among themselves so that each could have it for major concerts. Dame Myra Hess used to think of her pianos as so many husbands, once cabled Steinway:

I AM THINKING OF DIVORCING NO. 2 AND TAKING ON NO. 3.

Make It Sexy. It was inevitable that one day Baldwin would get tired of being second in the concert halls and would try harder to improve its instrument. The result is the piano that sounded so good that day at Town Hall: Baldwin's new model, SD-10. Guided by such consultants as Leonard Bernstein and Cincinnati Symphony Conductor Max Rudolf, Baldwin's experts worked for ten years revamping the instrument's inner parts to increase its reverberation and enhance its timbre. They altered the length, size and layout of the strings, redesigned the bridge, which transmits vibrations from the "speaking length" of the strings to the sounding board, and devised new pins for anchoring the strings to the metal frame. Periodically concert pianists stopped off at the Baldwin factory in Cincinnati to test the evolving instrument. "Make it more sexy," advised one. Try for tones "like smoke rings," suggested another.

Finally Baldwin produced a satisfactory prototype, placed it alongside two standard models identical in appearance, and invited pianists to play a musical game of "Will the Real SD-10 Please Stand Out?" It worked. Abbey Simon, a performer and professor of piano at the Indiana University School of Music, tried all three instruments, then told Baldwin executives: "My God, you could have 50 pianists here and they'd all know."

No More Ping. The first public performance on the SD-10 came last fall, when French Pianist Jeanne-Marie Darre introduced it at a concert in Manhattan. Discerning ears immediately noted the brighter bass and treble, the absence of the old percussive ping when notes were struck, and the clear, warm, sustained sound that allowed Darre to milk melodies like a singer spinning out an aria. After hearing the new model in San Francisco, one critic remarked: "If Beethoven had had a piano like that, the course of music would have been radically altered."

The response from pianists has been encouraging too. Lorin Hollander, who is on a world tour with the Cincinnati Symphony, has an SD-10 in tow. By the time the piano reached Bombay last week, it had already been scratched and dropped, its hammers had been filed down three times and a damaged softpedal had been repaired. But nothing has hurt the sound. Says Hollander: "It is round, warm and full. The tone is big; it sings, it grows, it is long-lasting. You can't imagine a better-sounding piano."

Baldwin is now pushing ahead with plans to phase out its standard model, largely unchanged since the 1930s, and replace it with the SD-10; but it is slow going, since one 9-ft.-long, 1,400-lb. concert grand takes a full year to roll off the production line. The company now has nine of the new pianos deployed in major U.S. cities, hopes to have 20 by year's end and 100 sometime next year. Then it will begin adapting the improvements to home and school-type grands.

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