Someone just spent R4m on a (nearly) new piano

Cape Town piano dealer Ian Burgess-Simpson Pianos let slip that it imported a Fazioli concert grand piano for one of its clients and will deliver it to the lucky pianist within days. It just needs to unpack it after the long flight from Italy, because you don’t stuff a Faziolo into a shipping container.

While not disclosing the exact price, a new Fazioli F278 concert grand carries a tag of $326 000, equal to R4.8 million at the current exchange rate. Assuming that the buyer paid for their new piano a few weeks earlier, when the rand was a lot stronger, they probably paid slightly more than R4 million.

“That’s pretty close,” commented one of the staff members at Ian Burgess-Simpson Pianos.

The dealer disclosed that the piano has been purchased by a private buyer, who it says is a serious pianist who is realising his dream of owning and playing on an “astonishingly fine piano”. The new owner indicated that he also plans to make the piano accessible to pianists and piano lovers for small concerts, or just for the opportunity to try one of these unique instruments.

Fazioli is a relative newcomer in the world of upmarket pianos. Paolo Fazioli founded his factory only 40 years ago, compared to other well-known brands that have been around for centuries.

Pricey pianos

At the top end of the market, Steinway & Sons, Yamaha, Blüthner and Bösendorfer are most likely to be found on stage in front of the likes of Yuja Wang.

Fazioli pianos are more scarce, partly because they are very expensive and partly because Fazioli produces a maximum of 140 pianos per annum. Economics 101 lecturers would immediately point out that they are expensive because they are scarce.

Read: A huge collection of bizarre, rare pianos is coming to auction

There are more expensive pianos around, but they are usually expensive for reasons other than their musical appeal. It’s a moving target, but Steinway & Sons boasts of a few specially painted pianos valued at more than $2.5 million – an eye-watering R37 million.

Pianist Magazine noted in 2018 that a normal brown (and faded) upright Steinway was sold at an auction for $2.2 million, purely because it was owned by John Lennon. At the time it was the second most expensive piano in the world.

In contrast, Beethoven’s Broadwood & Sons grand piano, which the great composer literally hit to pieces when his hearing started to fail, was said to be worth only around $200 000, according to an old article on estimates.

The piano was donated to virtuoso Franz Liszt after Beethoven’s death and, now restored, belongs to the Hungarian National Museum. An old Broadwood grand was recently offered for sale in SA for R38 000.

‘Not an indulgence of wealth’

With regards to the new Fazioli, Ian Burgess-Simpson Pianos noted: “The purchase of this piano is not an indulgence of wealth, but the expression of a great and life-long passion.”

We would like to add that spending R4 million on a piano also proves the beauty of capitalism.

The free market system allows choice. A lot of people would immediately say that it is insane to spend millions on a piano. One could argue that a Yamaha grand piano (around R1.2 million) is sufficient – and bank the rest of the money.

It sounds fair, but the argument fails when the next person says a digital Rowland grand (R74 000) is good enough and that spending R1.2 million on a piano is insane. Eventually the argument will end when somebody advocates that R74 000 is too much as well, all the way down to saying that a R500 plastic keyboard is not a necessity. Then the music ends.

Prices are relative. Some people will not be willing to spent R32 on a cup of coffee. A wristwatch only tells the time, but is more expensive than a stove.

Patrons at the Drydock Restaurant at the Knysna Waterfront (prawns at R79, including a glass of wine) were treated to a show a few weeks ago when somebody launched a new catamaran. Talk on quayside was that it cost R27 million.

There was a similar show two days later, but this owner had to make do with a yacht costing less than R80 000, nevertheless more valuable than his car. This is not unusual; most members at any yacht club in SA would admit that their boats are worth more than their cars.

Let’s not forget to mention cars – a lot are more expensive than a three-bedroom house. And cyclists pay way more for a bicycle than for a new mattress.

The benefit of choice is the freedom to spent money on nice stuff, like a Fazioli.

This piano

Burgess-Simpson says Fazioli pianos are the most hand-built pianos in the world with fewer than 140 grand pianos released each year. Each instrument takes two years to complete under the direct supervision of Fazioli himself, the inventor, designer and owner of these unique pianos.

“It is often overlooked that the piano was in fact invented by an Italian, Bartolomeo Cristofori, in the early 1700s,” according to the piano dealer. “There are only eight Fazioli pianos on the whole continent and all of them are located in SA.”

Ian Burgess-Simpson Pianos is the first dealership to represent Fazioli in Africa and notes that the new Fazioli has a unique heritage.

“This instrument comes from the Fazioli concert fleet and is only four years old,” says the dealer.

“It has the remarkable distinction of having been specifically selected for performances by great pianists, including Daniil Trifonov, Angela Hewitt, Louis Lortie and Vadym Kholodenko. It was also used in some major international piano competitions, such as the Scriabin Competition in Grosseto.

“The import of an instrument like this, as well as the general success of Fazioli in South Africa, in less than two-and-a-half years since it was launched here, is a tremendously encouraging indication that the music industry, despite the profound challenges it has been facing, remains more than alive and well,” according to Burgess-Simpson.

Fazioli’s impact

He adds that no piano manufacturer since Henry Steinway in the late 1800s, has had a comparable impact on the world of the piano in such a short time than Fazioli, who has introduced unique concepts around the touch and tone of a piano. “[These concepts] changed the landscape of the recording and concert world in just four decades.

“As these pianos are built in such extremely small quantities [compare 140 annually to Steinway’s current production of around 3 500 per annum] there has never been a piano of this rarity and stature in the last 100 years. Each Fazioli piano is personally checked by Paolo Fazioli before it leaves the factory in Sacile, Italy,” according to Burgess-Simpson.

Among the rare features of these instruments are soundboards built from Italian Red Spruce from the Val di Fiemme region of the Italian Alps, the same forest from which Stradivari selected the wood for his famous violins.

Building techniques and innovative use of materials make Fazioli pianos completely unique within the upper range of fine pianos and Paolo Fazioli has been directly involved in the most minute detail of the design and construction of these pianos from their inception.

One such small detail, to solve the natural tendency for brass to tarnish relatively quickly, is to gold-plate all of the hinges and fittings of these instruments.

“There is nothing ostentatious about this, it is purely a practical solution to a problem,” says Burgess-Simpson.

Another unique Fazioli F278 grand piano is the subject of a heart-wrenching story: movers dropped the one-of-a-kind piano – it was built with four foot pedals instead of three – after lifting it off a stage following a recital by the owner, classical pianist Angela Hewitt. The £150 000 (R3 million) Fazioli was damaged beyond repair.

A last note for (very rich) piano lovers is that there are two more Fazioli grand pianos available in Cape Town. Let’s put a value of R10 million on all three.

That’s a lot of money, but they are there because somebody will buy them. Rush while stocks last.