C Bechstein Concert 8 | Upright Piano Review

 

C Bechstein has been making high-end upright pianos longer than almost anyone else in the industry. Given their pedigree, it’s not a huge surprise that today they’re known for producing some of the finest hand-made upright pianos money can buy.

In this article and companion video, we'll be taking an in-depth look at their ultra upright piano - the crown jewel of their entire upright piano lineup with the legendary C Bechstein Concert 8 Upright Piano.

 

The World’s Finest Upright Piano?

Whether it’s respected industry critics, elite pianists, aficionados or simply connoisseurs, there’s a veritable legion of people who think that the Concert 8 is the best upright piano on the planet. There’s a litany of upright and grand piano best-practice piano manufacturing techniques and materials employed on the Concert 8 that support this opinion, such as the extremely rare tapered Val Di’ Fiemme red spruce sourced for the soundboard, or an action so extensively regulated that it outplays most grand pianos.

We’re to cover a lot of ground as to what makes this piano so special, and why many of the 20th century's greatest artists, such as Simon & Garfunkel, Sir Simon Rattle and even the Beatles relegated their Steinways to compose on a Concert 8.

Let’s get into it.

 

C Bechstein Concert 8 - Background Information

Let's start with a bit of background about this instrument. As we stated in the intro, the C Bechstein Concert 8 Upright Piano has a reputation going back many decades as being the finest upright piano in the world.

Now, this is not something that we would throw out there lightly or as a Bechstein dealer trying to sell their products. To prove our point, if you refer to the Larry Fine "Piano Book", the current Piano Buyer edition states in writing that the Concert 8 is consistently held as one of the finest upright pianos ever made. Larry Fine is considered one of if not the foremost critic in the piano industry as a whole.

 

Country of Origin

The Concert 8 is made entirely in Germany, and it's handcrafted with fanatical attention to detail. It is the only upright piano that Bechstein label's as being part of their Concert piano series, alongside the C. Bechstein grands, at least partially because it's more than capable of the sophisticated dynamics typically only found on German grands.

Compared to their other top-level uprights, the Concert 8 has a thicker pin block, and longer tuning pins, giving better hold and control of the pins, resulting in a more stable tuning and consistent pitch.

 

Recent Redesign

The Concert 8 has been a staple C. Bechstein instrument for most of Bechstein’s existence, but it received a fresh design upgrade in recent years that brought it more in line with a grand piano and to an even higher overall level.

 

Who Should Consider a Concert 8?

If you’re in the market for a premium quality acoustic piano and you’ve got the budget, even if you haven’t previously considered an upright piano, you simply can’t avoid a Concert 8 if your list were to include the absolute best of the best.

Quite frankly, even if you even were in the market for a grand piano, in the 5 to 5.5-foot range with a budget of $70,000 - $80,000 USD, such as a larger W. Hoffmann Professional or smaller Bechstein Academy, there's a good chance you’ll get a higher level musical experience out of the Concert 8. There's no question it dramatically outplays many run-of-the-mill grands on the market.

With some background information out of the way, let’s move on to a discussion of the action.

 

Piano Action

Bechstein’s ‘Gold Line Action’

Bechstein's upright actions have always been part of their overall appeal, and this is especially true of their top ‘Gold Line Action’ because they spend an inordinate amount of time regulating and prepping them - the same amount of time you can expect on grands that cost $100,000, which is extremely unusual for an upright piano.

The Concert 8 has over 170 measurable man-hours of manufacturing time at the factory applied to it. A good amount of that time is specifically devoted to regulating and weighting the acoustic assembly of the C Bechstein Concert 8, and the result is an incredibly responsive action that's also super fluid, and with the large 52" frame, you can match the sound volume of grand pianos with little effort.

 

Action Materials

In terms of the materials, this action is getting the same highest quality wood and hammers as their Masterpiece Class grands, even the concert grands, which is a dark burl walnut crown hammer and burl Vavona. Every C. Bechstein piano also gets its own custom-made hammers, including the Concert 8, which is again, very rare in the industry.

 

Action Weighting

The weight of the action is also worth noting. If somebody is used to an upright piano being a little bit lighter than a grand, you're not going to get that on the Concert 8. The Concert 8 is instead weighted much closer to a grand piano. We should emphasize that we’re not saying the piano is heavy or arduous, but rather that they've weighted it to create an authentic grand piano experience.

 

Upright Piano Sound - Timbre and Construction Materials

Color

Let's move on to sound. If we could describe the sound profile of the C. Bechstein Concert 8 in a single word, it would be color. The tone of the C Bechstein Concert 8 is complex and sustaining, with a very clear fundamental tone. Each note produces a vast array of well-balanced harmonics, and the soundboard is responsive enough to maintain the clarity of every tone even when pushed with thick chords at high volumes.

The treble is strong with a beautiful singing attack with very low hammer noise, and the mid-range is lush with plenty of tonal palette to play with. The bass is warm without being overly resonant, and the transition to the bass from the tenor is barely detectable, like a fantastic 6’ grand.

 

Soundboard: Val Di’ Fiemme Red Spruce

At the heart of this magical tone and distinctive timbre is of course the Italian Red Spruce soundboard, from the famed Val Di’ Fiemme. The very same source of spruce that Stradivarius used for his violins.

If every piano could have an optimized sound development or a unique sound like this, I'm sure every manufacturer would love for that to be the case. But this is cold, hard science and engineering with an untenable price tag for most manufacturers that actually gives us the tone that we are hearing.

 

Other Notable Design Features

The Concert 8 has agraffes from top to bottom, a “double duplex” stringing technique, and a fully integrated frame and plate structure for maximum sympathetic resonance.

The entire frame of the instrument is designed to amplify the tone, much in the way a grand is, while deadening the less ‘attractive’ resonating components within the instrument. This same philosophy is also applied to every C. Bechstein grand piano.

Cabinetry

We also need to talk about the cabinetry. By cabinetry, we’re not referring to the exterior appearance, but rather the actual substructure of wood that holds this instrument together.

At the back of the piano, there are six full-size back posts, all of them being solid hardwood. These back posts are mounted directly to the frame along with inner rim-type material to help activate some of the less naturally responsive parts of the soundboard.

In terms of aesthetics, on the top left at the back is a beautifully milled-in Bechstein logo that's just an extra nice little touch of elegance and precision on the instrument.

 

Optional Sostenuto & Vario System Upgrades

It's also worth mentioning that the Concert 8 is available with an optional sostenuto pedal, and recently, it's also available with Bechstein's Vario System add-on, which allows for silent practice with headphones.

 

Conclusions

As much as one must marvel at the high price tag for this instrument at over $80,000, the inevitable question gets asked: even in a grand piano, could you purchase an instrument with a finer tone for less money?

The answer of course is no. We have the occasional Shigeru Kawai in our showroom that may come very close, but by and large, most customers would, on average, need to spend $100,000+ to achieve this level of finish and detail in a piano.

The Concert 8 is as deserving of the claim “Finest Upright In The World” in 2022 as it was 50 or 100 years ago, and every bit worth a try if you can find one.

The post C Bechstein Concert 8 | Upright Piano Review first appeared on Merriam Pianos

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C. Bechstein M/P192 Grand Piano Review & Demo

Introduction

The C. Bechstein A 192 ( formerly C. Bechstein MP192) Is Amongst the World’s Very Finest 6′ Pianos. It’s Size Makes It Ideal for Most Home Settings, and Its Length Means that A Clear, Sustaining, and Full Bass Tone Is Always at Your Disposal. Few Instruments Will Match the Long List of Industry-Topping Design Techniques Used in This Piano…While the Fazioli F-183, the Bosendorfer 185, or The Hamburg Steinway All Have Common Elements with The M/P 192, None Combine as Many in A Single Instrument.  And That’s Before Any Consideration for Equipment Modernity, Wood Processing, and The Incredibly Deep Pool of Talent that C. Bechstein Draws Upon.  An Instrument of Complete Quality.

C. Bechstein M/P192 Grand Piano Review Video Transcription

Thanks for being here with us! In this article, we'll be covering C. Bechstein's famous 6 foot Grand Piano - the A192, handmade in Germany. Before we dive into the A192, a little bit of background information on C. Bechstein; The company was founded by Carl Bechstein in 1853 and continue to manufacture high quality, luxurious pianos to this day. The durability of the C. Bechstein grand piano is long-established, and Bechstein continues to be world-renowned for their high-end pianos and that incorporates the absolute best manufacturing processes possible with a wealth of craftsmanship very few others can rival. C. Bechstein stands among an elite few at the vanguard of piano making.
The A192 is part of the C. Bechstein Concert Series, also referred to as the Masterpiece series. This series represents a collection of several acoustic pianos that are right at the very top of the manufacturing quality range that Bechstein is capable of producing. At the C. Bechstein Pianofortefabrik, experienced piano-makers build instruments of exceptional quality, each of them provided with a distinctive musical personality. The A192 in the series at 6'3", larger than the 5'5" L167. Above the A192 is the 7' B212, semi-concert grand piano 7'6" C232 and then, of course, the D282 9'2 full concert grand.

A192 Design/Materials Overview:

Let's get right into the Bechstein Model A192 and why this is one of the top 6 foot pianos on the planet. For starters, I really like the size of this instrument and there are a couple of features present that really excite me as a piano player. The first of these features that immediately jumps out is the soundboard. The spruce used for the soundboard is harvested from the Val di Fiemme forest in Italy. This is exactly the same source of spruce that Stradivarius used for his violins. Fazioli, another high-end piano manufacturer are the only other company that sources soundboards from the Val di Fiemme. All of this is to say the spruce is highly exclusive - very consistent, dried at a very low percentage of humidity and it's very light as well. Added together, these features result in a soundboard that is extremely lively and doesn't take a lot of energy to activate, and Bechstein's membrane-soundboard-system retains the excellent tension and vibration characteristics for decades.
A second feature that is common among some of the very best pianos in the world is the presence of a vertically laminated bridge. A vertically laminated bridge consists of multiple plies of a highly engineered hardwood that are all laminated together to form this kind of vertical highway to transmit the vibration from strings down through the bridge to the soundboard.  Vertically laminated bridges are something that Steinway & Sons first innovated more than a hundred years ago and their inclusion is pretty much considered best practice today in the finest instruments. On the top of the bridge is a maple cap that collects energy to anchor the bridge pins - another really critical feature.
All of this adds up to equal an instrument that is highly stable, but also capable of transmitting huge amounts of energy from the strings down into the soundboard. And of course, the A192 also benefits from C. Bechstein's brand new internal hammer factory. All of Bechstein's hammers are now hand made in house, the first time in many years that this has been the case. Very few manufacturers make their own hammers, so it was a pretty big deal in the industry when Bechstein ventured to do so once again. What's also remarkable is that they custom-make different sets of hammers for every single instrument they build, meaning every set of hammers are exactly weighted and shaped for their specific model.
The wood Bechstein uses for the hammers in the grands of their Masterpiece series is dark walnut, which is quite unusual. Dark walnut is an ultra-premium wood due to it's scarcity, but Bechstein has chosen it for very good reason as walnut is lighter and denser than mahogany, which is the material you'll typically find in premium pianos. Walnut also produces a different tonal quality, which was surely another consideration in Bechstein's decision to use walnut instead of mahogany.

Piano Action:

The piano action is one of the most important parts of any piano as it functions as the user's mechanical interface - the action is how the player tells the piano what they want it to do. Building a good action is really difficult. The A192 has over 500 hours of manufacturing time applied to it and a good chunk of those hours are devoted to the assembly, weighting, and regulation of the action. I can tell you that even right out of the box without touching these pianos the actions are perfect - beautifully fluid, weighted perfectly, and just a real delight to play.
While the parts for the action are supplied by German company Renner, Bechstein designs and assembles them in their Berlin factory. Many other high-end European manufacturers use actions built entirely by Renner, so the fact that Bechstein designs and builds their own actions is somewhat unique for high-end European made pianos. Bechstein builds their own actions for all of their pianos, but their absolute top professional action, the Gold Line Action, is reserved for the pianos in the Masterpiece series.

Piano Tone:

I can say confidently that the A192 has one of my favorite scale designs,  it's just beautifully balanced, which is of course another crucial reason why it sounds so good. If there's one word I would use to describe the tone it would be color. There are so many overtones and wonderful colors contributing to what is definitely a super unique and distinct tonal profile.
A lot of people don't realize that a given piano tone is actually made up of seven or eight harmonics that are all combining for your ear to hear what it hears as a single note. When I play a C for example, you're not hearing just one defined pitch, but rather multiples of that frequency and specific harmonics of that frequency in different ratios. What I really love about the A192 is the almost perfectly even distribution of the volume of all of those harmonics right from the fundamental right up through the seventh harmonic.
Many pianos tend to emphasize either the very top of the harmonic range as well as the fundamentals and sort of cut out some in the middle. Some don't even make any attempt to do even this because there's just not enough engineering time and quite frankly, budget to apply that type of scrutiny to the instrument.
The other thing I would say about the tone is just how lively it is. You kind of invent your own language sometimes to talk about pianos, but this bass is definitely very active and lively. The piano feels like it almost wants to play itself once you get the bass going so you're not constantly having to work hard to get the bass projecting. The powerful bass is also super clear and remind me of a really good Steinway Model B 7 footer.
The treble is very delicate and not as pronounced as something like the B212 or even the Concert 8 upright piano to my ear, but not to say that it's unbalanced. It really is just a beautiful curve from the bottom to the top of this instrument, resulting in a highly lyrical voice.

Conclusions:

I hope you've enjoyed the summary of this beautiful C. Bechstein 192. This is a 6-foot instrument with convenient dimensions capable of meeting and exceeding the demanding requirements of music conservatories,  high-end recording studios, music conservatories, and pianists of all levels - both professional musicians and non-professionals who appreciate the finest in craftsmanship.

The post C. Bechstein M/P192 Grand Piano Review & Demo first appeared on Merriam Pianos

2359 Bristol Cir #200, Oakville, ON L6H 6P8

merriammusic.com

(905) 829-2020