Chopin and Grieg on an 1864 Steinway Square Grand

This Steinway & Sons square grand #10189 was built in 1864 in New York, during the US civil war and the Presidency of Abraham Lincoln. The California gold-miner great-grandfather of the family that still owns it purchased it a few years later at Sherman-Clay company in San Francisco, as a Christmas present for his musically-inclined wife. She played it daily until she was 90 years old, after which it passed to her granddaughter, and then to her children and grand-children. After more than 150 years of use and some time in humid Hawaii, the family sent it to Historic Pianos for complete restoration, which was completed in 2017. The Brazilian rosewood veneer was very much prized in the best American furniture styles of the time. In this video the restorer of the instrument (who is very much an amateur pianist) plays two Chopin preludes ("Funeral March" Op. 28 No. 20 and "Raindrop" Op. 28 No. 15) and also a short Grieg lyric piece ("Norwegisch" Op.12 No. 6)

In the last half of the 19th century, square pianos were much more popular in America than in Europe, and in 1864 they were considered the "standard" American piano for most homes and many public settings. This piano is technologically intermediate between the earliest straight-strung squares of the 1850's, and the much larger, more heavily-strung squares that followed in the 1870s through 1890's. It has Steinway's patented "overstrung scale" incorporating a cast-iron string plate and three separate bridges, where the bass strings are angled over the treble strings. This allows longer strings to fit in a smaller case, and allows the bass bridges to be located nearer the middle of the soundboard, giving a more resonant bass response. The double-strung instrument's sound is transitional, with a more "modern" tone than Steinway's earliest squares, but still with some of the distinctive, quick treble decay common in squares. The 7-octave (85-note) compass was state-of-the-art for its day, at only three notes less than the standard modern 88-note instrument. Even premier manufacturers like Steinway continued to produce 85-note grands well into the 1890's.