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Ownership of a piano has always had a loose connection to wealth and class: they are not cheap; they take up valuable space in a home; and learning to play requires much time and commitment.
So, as the economies of the east Asia grew rapidly in the latter half of the 20th century, domestic demand for grands, baby grands and upright pianos surged. Before long, China became the world’s piano factory — buying up European firms and producing decent instruments on a massive scale.
Even UK makers of high-quality pianos, such as Edelweiss, based just outside Cambridge, came to rely largely on parts being shipped from the east Asia — simply because the skills required to make them more locally had vanished.
“Going back a hundred years or so, the British used to be quite good at it,” says Edelweiss’s creative director Mark Norman, whose father founded the business as a piano restoration firm in the mid 1970s. “But, now, around 80 per cent of the world’s piano parts are sourced in the far east.”
Edelweiss, like other piano makers, came to rely on the imports. “If the containers of parts arrived regularly, it was a pretty good system,” Norman says. “We were about to fly out to China with a view to expanding our relationship [with Chinese factories] when Covid hit. Our flights were cancelled. We were quite glad we didn’t go, as we might never have got home again.”
This was not just a postponed business meeting, however. China, in effect, stopped exporting during that stage of the pandemic, completely disrupting Edelweiss’s supply chain. “We were in a fortunate position in that we’d just ordered quite a lot of parts and we were stocked up,” recalls Norman. “But if they shut down for two years, or if it happened again, what would we do?”
The firm had been worried about this kind of eventuality for a number of years and had pondered the possibility of making a piano entirely sourced and built in the UK. Up until then, Norman had resisted, considering it a near-impossible task.
“The prospect was daunting,” he says. “But we had to secure a high-quality supply chain that wasn’t going to give us these problems, and obviously it would be desirable in terms of carbon footprint.”
While decades spent restoring and building pianos to high standards had equipped Edelweiss with a wealth of skills, its staff actually had little knowledge of how to make the instrument’s constituent parts. The company therefore hired a respected American piano designer, Delwin Fandrich, to put together drawings for a new model, which the firm envisioned as being the smallest grand piano in the world.
“Edelweiss took on a project that few companies — even much larger ones — are willing to consider,” says Fandrich. “Building any piano is a formidable task, but building one in-house to an all-new design even more so.”
After the design was established, the firm started sounding out potential suppliers. “Initially, we didn’t tell them what the project was,” says Norman. “We really wanted to see how passionate they were, as we believe that, if you’re working on an instrument, you aren’t just doing a job. You’re making a piano, you have to go the extra mile to make it better.”
Enthused by the response, Edelweiss decided to take the plunge, sending out legal non-disclosure agreements to guarantee confidentiality, then revealing their full plan to the preferred firms.
One of the most critical elements was the piano’s frame. It is traditionally cast in iron — which requires a lengthy process of mould making, adjustment, and yet more mould making. Edelweiss could not find a foundry able to produce the cast iron it wanted, but was able to find a supplier who could cut it from steel. Then, the makers had to experiment with welding and bolting to produce a frame that could pass stringent stress tests. However, the action (the mechanism that brings the hammers into contact with the strings) proved one challenge too many; it was simply too complex to make from scratch.
“You have to do thousands of tests on each key,” explains Norman. “The development process and quality control would be exacting and it would be very, very difficult to make any money. So, for this piano we’re using a carbon fibre composite action from the USA, which is very nice, we’re getting good results from it.”
Overall, the process from design to the finished piano took three years; Norman estimates the financial cost as somewhere between £100,000 and £200,000 “which from one point of view isn’t too bad, but from another is rather a lot”.
But whatever the precise outlay, it has left Edelweiss with a unique product — much loved by pianists — and in a much stronger position.
“I wouldn’t say we were bulletproof,” says Norman. “But my father was always an innovator and, if he was still around, I think he’d be really pleased with what we’ve done.”
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