🎹 Eastern European Pianos | Estonia, Petrof, Bohemia | Pianos of the World- EP. 06 🎹

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0:00 - Intro
0:36 - Opening Playing Demo on Estonia L168
1:01 - Video Overview
1:30 - Eastern European Pianos v.s. The Rest of The World
2:41 - Eastern European Piano History
3:57 - Post-U.S.S.R. Eastern European Pianos
6:03 - Estonia Pianos
6:52 - Family Operated Piano. Companies
8:27 - North American Geography v.s. European Geography
9:40 - Eastern European Piano Qualities
11:27 - Video Outro

Thanks for joining us at the Merriam Pianos YouTube channel. Today, we’ve got the final entry in our series on the various piano-producing regions from around the world as we explore Eastern Europe.

In many cases, pianos produced in Eastern Europe represent a high-value, lower-cost alternative to a German piano, while offering a distinctly different musical experience from a Japanese piano.

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Overview
After exploring all of these different piano-producing regions of the world in recent weeks, it’s really quite striking how different their stories all are from one another.

Something that makes the Eastern European story so different from the German or American story for example is that despite economic and industrial might, the Eastern European region didn’t achieve the same level of piano producing dominance.

Major events such as the two World Wars and the rise of communism were big factors in preventing the Eastern European piano industry from maintaining a strong foothold throughout the 19th century.

Post-U.S.S.R. to Today
After the Soviet Union dissolved in 1991, a handful of major players were able to survive and eventually began to prosper, such as Petrof and Bohemia (since purchased by C. Bechstein and now sold under the W. Hoffmann brand) in the Czech Republic. The top lines from these brands are held in very high regard today as excellent handcrafted pianos.

In Poland, the last domestic producer Calisia went out of business in the early 2000s, however, new manufacturers have set up shop in older Polish factories where a lot of well-regarded piano rebuilding is now taking place.

Schimmel actually purchased a factory from a rebuilder and now produces their Wilhelm Schimmel pianos from the ground up in Poland (originally these pianos were sold under the Vogel brand).

In the North-Western portion of Eastern Europe, we of course have Estonia. Estonia is still producing pianos to this day in Estonia, and they’re easily achieving the highest quality level of any Eastern European manufacturer.

In fact, Estonia’s pianos are probably the best pianos ever to come out of Eastern Europe, and are regarded by many as one of the highest value performance level pianos available anywhere in the world.

It’s interesting to note that with the exception of Estonia, the majority of pianos being produced in Eastern Europe today tend to feature Western European designs and approaches to sound, but are built in Eastern Europe to leverage the lower cost of labour.

Musical Qualities
Since many of the modern Eastern European pianos of today tend to sound and play like Western European instruments, we’re going to focus on the Eastern European pianos of the past when discussing overall musical qualities and characteristics.

For instance, the Petrof and Bohemia pianos of the past definitely shared certain characteristics. One example would be the actions, which seemed to utilize a different geometric design than Western actions that made it feel like the keys were on a slight slope. The black keys also felt narrower.

Tone-wise, these pianos tended to have a very lovely mid-range bell-like tone, and a nice sustain across the instrument. The bass tended not to be too brassy, but quite clear instead.

Conclusion
Thanks very much for watching and for joining us throughout this recent series exploring the different piano-producing regions from around the world. It’s been a very fun journey and we hope you’ve enjoyed it!

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