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Steinway D-274
Our Steinway D-274 was thoughtfully selected for UKARIA by British pianist Paul Lewis, in collaboration with Ulrich Gerhartz, Director of Concert and Artist Services at Steinway, London. After meeting at the Steinway factory in Hamburg to find a piano suited to the intimate environment of UKARIA, Paul and Ulrich followed the instrument to Adelaide for its installation. In February 2023, Paul launched the piano with a performance of parts one and two of the completed Schubert Sonatas – a landmark world tour which he returned to complete in 2024. UKARIA is deeply grateful to John Lane Koch, whose generous bequest funded the acquisition in its entirety.
‘This opportunity to have a full-size, concert grand Steinway gives our artists an opportunity to have an incredible colour palette, and that’s very exciting as we move into the future, and more and more artists come through the Centre.
– Alison Beare, CEO of UKARIA
Ulrich Gerhartz graced UKARIA with his world-class finesse and sensitivity throughout the intricate process of choosing a piano for our venue and later tailoring it in situ to resonate with the auditorium’s unique acoustic. ‘It’s a chamber music venue – not a big hall – so one’s looking for a chamber music instrument, but at the same time for a piano that is very well balanced between its bass, tenor, middle and treble sections, so that it is almost a little orchestra within itself,’ Ulrich Gerhartz explains in a short film produced by Riley Scott Creative capturing the installation of the piano.
Our former Communications Manager Dylan Henderson interviewed Ulrich further about his collaboration with Paul Lewis on the selection of the piano. ‘It was very much a team effort and when you work with great artists, it has to be a team effort. It’s not just the artist saying "I want this and this,” because artists very often are not as informed about what goes into actually making a piano. So Paul was very glad that I was with him in the factory, and I was glad that I was in the factory with Paul! We were both scratching our heads after looking at the first eight pianos and thinking, “Oh my god, what are we going to do next?” Thankfully, I could pull some strings with my colleagues to make some more choices available, and that’s how we ended up with this piano.’ The nuances of Ulrich’s fine-tuning of the Steinway at UKARIA can be further discovered in Dylan’s full interview with the master craftsman himself.