In late 1979 or early 1980, PPNY was the first non-Steinway New York affiliated piano company ever to deliver a Steinway Model D-274 Grand Piano to Carnegie Hall — and in fact at that time, nobody from Pro Piano had ever set foot in Carnegie Hall, let alone had they boldly walked in with one other person to glibly announce their presence and their presumptuous intention to mount the hallowed hall’s 2.5 flights of stairs with 2 landings to boot, leading to the iconic (now Stern) Main Stage, from the W. 56th Street Stage Door Entrance.
Nope, nobody had been that bold or that delusional till your faithful correspondent and another Gallant and Innocent Brave Heart arrived there in an unmarked white Pro Piano International truck, one mid-day, ready to roll with a Hamburg Steinway Model D-274 for Maurizio Pollini’s matinee recital the following day.
I myself try never to leave home without some cash, a Platinum Card, and keys — almost always. The cash came in real handy that afternoon in Carnegie Hall.
We both assumed the two of us could deliver a Hamburg Steinway Model D-274 by ourselves, into what we presumed would be a flat access route to the stage.
OMG! Were we wrong!
Not only were we met with the previously described stairs, landings, and other nightmares, we were unknowingly entering a National Historic Landmark Building.
After justifiably getting the cold shoulder from Local No. 1’s 6-man crew, I rushed out onto 7th Avenue and started beckoning sturdy young or old men with $100 bills. In not more than 5 minutes, I had 4 decently eager candidates. We went back into the hallway, and started up the stairs with our HSTD-274 on its skid board, which accompanied the piano on its side, leaving a footprint of about 9′ L x 2′ W x 6′ H during such a trip.
The 2 landings in the old hall were only deep enough to allow about a third of the piano to rest before the nose-end again needed to be lifted off the stairs while the 3 men and the key-end below put their shoulders to the task of getting the nose to the next flight of stairs. There were rubber cleats on each lip of the stairway, so friction and weight forged an enormously resistant pact — it was miserably difficult.
Finally, sheer muscle and determination got us to the top of the 2.5 flights of Welcome to Carnegie Hall stairs.
Immediately to our left on the landing atop the 2.5 flights of stairs was what in earlier years had been the Stage Manager’s perch, also quite likely a point from which artists could spring sprightly onto the stage. Instead, I thought of that little room as a crow’s nest on a bounty-pillaging pirate ship crossing turbulent seas.
Regardless, we were then piano movers, not pirates. There was more work to do.
So, sliding the piano into position, we lifted the nose-end far enough into the Crow’s Nest door to be able, in theory, to level the piano and merely slide it through the door onto the stage.
But I was again incorrect.
At this point, crewman Walter, perhaps less senior but more compassionate than the more tight-lipped crew who were mostly still milling around as if nothing was too unusual, came up to me and said, “You know, Steinway goes all the way up this orchestra aisle, to the top of the house, then comes straight back down the middle-left aisle with the piano’s nose toward the stage, and then they literally turn it into the foot space between the stage and the first row of seats, pick up one end, put a sawhorse under it, then the other end also on a sawhorse, and they lay the piano over onto its belly and push it like that, flat on its belly, right onto the stage!”
Hearing what they expected be done to one of my prized Hamburg Steinway Model D-274s used by Arrau, Ashkenazy, Brendel, Pollini, Barenboim, Perahia, and others, I told the crew’s front man to come with me.
We went to the truck, brought back probably 8 pieces of 8” x 8” x 2′ lumber we generally used to mount risers or shorter stages, and a red box of ¾” drive S-W sockets with a matching chrome ratchet.
I’d already decided to take out the front row of seats where Steinway routinely, on its belly, laid a grand piano onto the Carnegie Hall stage.
When crewmen saw the sockets, and saw me bend down twirling a ratchet round and round preparing to test the fit on one of the many nuts holding each rail beneath its own relative seat — all part of a slightly curved front row of orchestra seats (not individual seats, but an entire cast iron section of seats, numbering as a guess 8 per section) — they went absolutely Local 1 crazy with vitriol, loud voices, menacing gestures, and general ill will on steroids. It seemed a certainty I’d be persona non grata for many years thereafter.
But wait — Walter again calmly offered another snippet of info. The Hall and everything it is was decreed a National Historic Landmark — nothing could be damaged or menacingly touched, lest major consequences would rain down upon Pro Piano and me. At that time, major artists were in the process of booking Pro Pianos not only in Carnegie Hall but in halls around the country. I needed to play it cool.
So, first we tipped the piano onto its key-end so that we could, with a very few inches of clearance, spin it while on the bass corner of the key-end, to the left, letting it down closer to level position, with its belly facing the stage. First lifting one end, then the other, shoving in 2 lumber pieces at a time, we gradually rotated the lifts from nose-end to key-end, and built 32-inch-high makeshift sawhorses, upon which the piano was finally stationary on its side, about 8 inches from the stage.
We were instructed and ordered how to use many of our padded moving blankets to protect the apron, its ornamental trim, and stage floor, so damage to those areas would be of remote concern.
The next part was probably most daunting because we had to lean the piano’s top curved side over onto the stage on its belly, without sliding the rest of the piano or lumber toward the row of seats and their cast iron frames.
This was all done with guys off the street. Don’t forget, under Local 1 house jurisdiction, stagehands do not touch a stage piano until it is fully assembled. So though there was an entire Local 1 vocal ensemble giving instructions, only we 2 pros and 4 makeshift movers were actually working up a sweat.
From the time we started the trip up the stairs off W. 56th Street through all I’ve laid out, probably 2.0 to 2.5 hours had elapsed as we finished actually unpacking and assembling the piano for Maestro Pollini’s matinee recital the following day.