Fort Lauderdale News from Fort Lauderdale, Florida • Page 154

70 Fort Lauderdale News and Sun-Sentinel, Sunday, June 22, 1980 The great Steinway debate: Is the Hamburg model best? fuvn ink ENTERTAINMENT EDITOR Cowan ponders nightclub puzzle di -2-1 Dichter. Weissenberg. Upgrading those facilities would provide insurance against the potential end of the Cafe Cristal's supremacy as well as representing an adjustment to trends. "I might revamp and structure them like the nightclubs in Fort Lauderdale, but stepping them up a notch as supperclubs. That seems to be what people are looking for these days.

"The Oakland Park and Commercial Boulevard lounge area does well with crowds 30 and under. Maybe that's where the business is really at today," he muses. Just south of the Diplomat, the Marco Polo and Newport Hotel operations have shifted back to their traditional rock nostalgia and high-energy combos along "Motel Row." Like northeast Lauderdale, that section has had its ups and downs in recent years, but remains the only steady action along Miami Beach. For Cowan who ran the Marco Polo showrooms as trendy pop-rock showrooms briefly a decade ago to rejoin the ranks with his flagship would mark a change of an era as dramatic as the French revolution's taking of the Bastille. about 10 days and did "reasonable" business through this week.

But he feels the act's stature and the prices should have generated better response. "We did okay we didn't make any money, I can tell you that much right now. I haven't seen the final figures yet, but I don't think we lost any either. "We're in a transition period right now. We need new policies to adjust," Cowan remarks.

He has six months to watch Las Vegas, Atlantic City and record trends before scheduling the Cafe Cristal for next season. If top-drawer entertainers appear too risky, or too expensive, would he consider a revue or similar "house act" policy?" He hopes not. "I've never liked revues particularly might consider a good 'location but I don't really like the idea. I'd rather revamp our other operations." Thus, the reconaissance missions. The Diplomat has numerous lounge operations under its various roofs including the Tack Room, both a challenge and a respected showcase for acts on the way up.

Continued from page 3G New York if necessary. True, that can be expensive. It's a world-wide problem. We have seen schools handing out diplomas to so-called technicians after a year's course. It's criminal.

It takes about eight years to create a good piano technician." Steinway, Incidentally, never has been a prolific manufacturer. Its pianos are all virtually handmade, and seldom has production gone over 4,000 a year in the United States. The Hamburg plant produces around 2,000. By way of contrast, Baldwin makes about 45,000 a year and Yamaha, the biggest of all, some 250,000. j.

The Hamburg Steinway is a more traditionally built instrument than its American counterpart, and it uses the old-fashioned cloth felt bushings. It is the of American Steinway that the greater of temperature in American homes and concert halls, what with central heating and air conditioning, demand a different kind of manufacture than European instruments need. It is a fact that before World War II European pianos (and furniture, too) were not kiln-dried and seasoned as American pianos were. But after the war most European piano manufacturers began to match American specifications. Steinway in America force-dries the wood in kilns to 6 percent of moisture content, and so do "most European manufacturers these days.

New kilns are being put into the Hamburg plant to match the moisture content of the wood in the American pianos. Steinway says that European pianos do not stand up jn America a fact hotly denied by owners of Hamburg Steinways, Bosendorfers and Bechsteins. Many pianists also take issue with Steinway's claim that there is little difference between the American and Hamburg concert grand. They maintain that the Hamburg is a more "precisely built instrument, with a more even action, -with ivory keys (some pianists hate to play on plastic keys, even if there is every indication that nobody "could tell the difference in a blindfold test) and more responsive in its attack. Alexis Weissenberg is one pianist who is convinced that American Steinway has deteriorated.

"The United States Steinway used to be magnificent," he says. "In recent years there has been a change. The piano is uneven. It has become' more to sustain a singing line. More and more synthetic materials are being used.

About four or five years ago it beoame literally dangerous to play. .1 was lighting the instrument. I have complained to steinway. It was a very difficult emotional decision for me to make. The Steinway people understood." Not long ago Vladimir Horowitz, who has played only the American Steinway since he left Russia some 60 years ago, tried out a Hamburg Steinway.

He liked it but would not think of using one for a concert. "Much lighter," he says. "Much less volume, especially in the bass. It is a very good piano for light things, but for Schumann, Tchaikovsky, no." Of course Horowitz does not judge pianos by normal criteria not Horowitz, who demands a type of brilliance and who can command a sonority unique in the history of piano playing. The next time you drop in on your favorite lounge act, check out the fellows sitting at the bar with the computer-expressions on their faces.

Chances are they own the joint down the street and are casing the competition. There's a lot of that going on constantly hereabouts. But when the man doing the casing is Diplomat Hotel owner Irving Cow-, an it's time to dig out the local showbusiness map and prepare for some changes. While Al Hirt shuffled toward this week's finish of a month-long post-season gig at the Diplomat's Cafe Cristal, Cowan spent a few nights running down the action in Fort Lauderdale's northeast sup-perclub-lounge district. Hirt, Cowan told me shortly after Tuesday's final performance, proved to be a "fair experiment" but it leaves the Gold Coast's sole surviving cabaret showman with more concerns than he started with.

"I don't have a handle on the situation any more," Cowan admitted during our conversation. "It's hard to figure the kind of attractions people want nowadays. I think Zev Bufman said it recently when he said unless it's a superstar, they just don't want to be entertained. They want the big time, but they're jaded by it at the same time." Cowan, whose showrooms have traditionally catered to a mixed Miami-Fort Lauderdale audience, is more concerned with the lack of action in Dade and what it bodes for the future of frontline attractions. In all likelihood, there will be no more post-season attractions like Hjrt, and it's possible there will be some adjustments to the Cafe Cristal's midwinter lineups.

The Hirt booking was initially affected by the tension during the riots in Miami's northwest Liberty City area (Hirt opened the night after the curfew was lifted). Cowan says the program recovered after Andre Watts, who played a Hamburg Steinway the other week in New York, seems to be unhappy with all pianos. "There are very few of any make I like," he says. "The Hamburg I played had a nice, even projection. But I have lost confidence in pianos built by Steinway today.

Or by any other maker. A pianist's natural inclination is to keep on looking for something better. It might be an American Steinway, or a Hamburg, or a Bechstein. Whatever it is, I want it." But since American Steinway has not brought any Hamburg insruments into America, what is a pianist who wants one to do? Enter Ricard de La Rosa. He is a piano technician who, with his partner, Danta C.

Raso, opened a rental and maintenance establishment in San Francisco about 10 years ago, De La Rosa well knew of the unhappiness with the American Steinway, and he purchased a Hamburg Model (the concert grand). The Hamburg incidentally, costs around $40,000 here, as against some $20,000 for the American about the same for the Baldwin SD and $45,000 for the Bosendorfer concert grand (the most expensive of all pianos). By now ProPiano, De La Rosa's company, has five Hamburg Ds two in New York, three in San Francisco. He says that just recently the London branch of Hamburg Steinway has refused to sell concert grands to him, and that he is going to have to get them by devious means, De La Rosa sent circulars and ProPiano credit cards to pianists. Vladimir Ashkenazy was the first to respond, and was happy with the instrument rented to him.

Previously Claudio Arrau had used one of ProPiano's Hamburgs for a West Coast recital and word got around. Pianists on the order of an Arrau or Ashkenazy do not change instruments idly, and there was a rush to the ProPiano quarters. Suddenly the Hamburg Steinway became the fashionable instrument. For the coming season, De La Rosa has 75 orders for the Hamburg Steinway. He will send an instrument anywhere in the country, and he promises he will provide proper maintenance.

"We can't fill the demand," he says. "But we're here to stay. We'll pull pianos from the West Coast if rjecessary." a i i jnUa i i TTiiiTj ojol a i mil tj? lUiTjsli i 10101 1 1 i it ilsj i i 11 3 1 MV 1 1 nH 1 "HM I QM 3) ll 3' I 10 3 3 H'O 310 I A 01 A 0 NIO 1 31 HI XI t--. TJ 3 aHo ihfl ilsQ i ilolsps 8 Sjll.3 I 1 WlJI ni 3 'M'yld opisji Mij0'aa ni8i a1 tj di 3i hi il ll3dl "I I il 31 1 1 0 0 1 a 1 IT.h! 1 a' 3 0' i al hUI a I a 1 0 1 ioijSi3'iOjos(! oni il 1 d' ta ih s'otr 3 1 oia 3' 0 2:00 P.M. 7:30 P.M.

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