On Monday (4/11) at New York classical radio station WQXR, Amanda Angel writes that in New York City, “The new Steinway flagship store has opened on Avenue of the Americas.… The 163-year-old piano manufacturer … sold its 57th-street building in 2012. Steinway left its venerable flagship store in late 2014, and along with it, the Beaux Arts performance space that hosted innumerable recitals and a selection room where Sergei Rachmaninoff famously met Vladimir Horowitz.” The new space, designed by architect Annabelle Selldorf, includes a Spencer Finch light installation, a showroom with a “piano-like shape,” a new Steinway Hall that “doubles as a state-of-the-art recording studio,” and a selection room on the lower level, where, says CEO Michael Sweeney, “ ‘an artist who’s playing at Lincoln Center or Carnegie Hall frequently will come to Steinway to choose a specific performance instrument, and we’ll lay out a dozen different concert grands for them.’ … Artist Spencer Finch designed the light installation that hangs over the staircase, which is a rendering of Bach’s Goldberg Variations in color. Each of the dangling beams consists of two rods, one for each hand, and the colors represent the notes and chords.”
Posted April 12, 2016
