“When I was growing up in Russia in the late 1960's and 1970's, the magic Steinway sound descended upon me from the stage of Moscow's high temple of music: the Grand Hall of the Moscow Conservatory. From the fingers of the gods I worshiped, - Gilels, Richter, Neuhaus, Cliburn - came the unmistakable sonorities of the revered Steinway pianos, which were unavailable to us in our music school and had reached the status of unattainable objects of desire. Years later, when I found myself living in the west, I finally had the opportunity to have regular contact with Steinways, which over the years in my mind had become synonymous with the ideal piano. The Steinway epitomizes all that a pianist desires: depth, equality, ease of touch and a widest range of sonorities and colors from the most brilliant and thunderous fortissimos to the hushed intimacy of whispering pianissimos. With myriad gradations in between, from long sustained notes, rich with overtones, to the quicksilver cascades of light pearled passages, from grand rhetorical declamations to intimate melodic inflections, the Steinway sound makes it all possible to crystallize our wildest dreams on the keyboard and produce sonorities more effectively than we could ever imagine.”

Dmitry Rachmanov