“Vladimir Horowitz, Arthur Rubinstein, Lang Lang: These are just a few of the pianists who played at the majestic Beaux-Arts building that Steinway & Sons occupied for 89 years on Manhattan’s West 57th Street,” writes Sarah Medford in Monday’s (2/29) Wall Street Journal. “But in April, Steinway is taking its big-shouldered concert grands nearly 15 blocks south to a new home that architect Annabelle Selldorf has retooled into a 19,000-square-foot space with an airy showroom and her first-ever performance hall.… Steinway CEO Michael Sweeney … approached Selldorf after admiring the resonant public spaces she has designed, including New York’s Neue Galerie museum … The two-story space on Sixth Avenue [was] occupied for 20 years by the International Center of Photography” and will include a recording studio and rehearsal rooms. “The space will be accessible to school-age children as part of Steinway’s outreach program as well as to performers who often work with Steinway…. Over the central staircase hangs an assemblage of 32 chromatically paired LED tubes created by artist Spencer Finch. Titled Newton’s Theory of Color and Music (The Goldberg Variations), the piece was inspired by Bach’s piano composition and Sir Isaac Newton’s explorations of light and sound.”
Posted March 3, 2016
