Play the Fazioli

From The Register-Guard
By Bob Keefer

Note: The public is invited to see and play the Fazioli grand piano in the lobby of the Hult Center. Hours are Mon-Fri 12-5 pm (except July 4th) and before the Silva Hall concerts July 5 & July 7.

Most people, if they think about concert grand pianos at all, think "Steinway."

When Jeffrey Kahane sits down on stage at the Hult Center's Silva Concert Hall to play the Mozart piano concertos at the Oregon Bach Festival this afternoon, he'll be at the keyboard of a Fazioli F-278.

A what?

A $168,000 Italian piano, that's what. The 9-foot grand piano, along with a smaller 7 1/2 -foot Fazioli F-228, arrived in Eugene on Saturday morning by truck from a Salt Lake City piano dealer who brought them to the Bach festival free of charge because he knows that Kahane, who has one at his home, likes Faziolis.

Rick Baldassin, a music graduate of Brigham Young University, has owned Baldassin Pianos in Salt Lake City since going into the piano business in 1991. He has sold Faziolis since 1994.

Opening a piano store at a time of declining piano sales around the world required a different approach from selling Yamahas to every family on the block. Instead of buying pianos, those families have been buying digital keyboards for the past two decades, or - worse - not buying musical instruments at all.

So Baldassin did something bold. He decided to sell only very good pianos.

"So much of the trend has been toward lower-quality, mass-produced instruments," he said. "I wanted to take a stand for high quality."

The pianos that Paolo Fazioli has produced in Sacile, Italy, for the past 25 years are about as high-quality as you can find, Baldassin says. They're made individually with an emphasis on hand labor, selected materials and fine craft. The company, founded in 1979, produces only about 50 pianos a year. The one Kahane will play today has a serial number of 1,301.

"There is no one thing you can point to on this instrument that makes it better than other high-quality pianos," Baldassin said. "There are 25 things."

And, yes, they are expensive. Baldassin recently sold an F-308 - the model number refers to the piano's length in centimeters - for $240,000; the sides of the case were covered in a veneer of book-matched pyramid mahogany.

In 1997 the Sultan of Brunei ordered an F-308 for his daughter, though not from Baldassin's store. The piano was decorated in rare wood marquetry, along with gold, silver and precious stones. It reportedly sold for about $1 million.

Other Fazioli fans include pianist and Bach specialist Angela Hewitt, who owns two. She once caused a stir when she called the Steinway a "powerful if rather strident (and in my opinion, clumsy) piano" in an article in the Times Literary Supplement.

In an interview published earlier this year she called the Fazioli piano "a fabulous instrument," citing its unique sound and delicate action. "They don't say it's the Ferrari of the piano world for nothing," she said.

(Steinway & Sons has dropped her from its list of Steinway Artists.)

Other classical artists who play Faziolis - and who have felt the wrath of Steinway - are Louis Lortie and Garrick Ohlsson.

In the jazz world, Herbie Hancock plays them.

You can play one, too, for the next week, anyway. The second Fazioli piano Baldassin brought to Eugene is set up in the lobby of the Hult Center, slightly hidden behind the stairs next to the entrance to the Soreng Theater.

While it's here, Baldassin said, the public is invited to see and play it.

Or you can just listen to the pros play the big F-278. Kahane's concert starts this afternoon at 4 p.m.

The instrument will also be used in Uri Caine's performance of "The Goldberg Variations Reimagined" at 8 p.m. Friday.

After Friday's show both pianos go back on the truck and head home to Salt Lake City.