Marcus Warner’s Blüthner

In May 2021 I began the hunt for my first ever acoustic piano, something that would encapsulate the close-mic’d, intimate sound that I usually write with, but with the scope to expand into a louder, concert-like dynamic. The problem I had kept running into was that felt pianos have a tendency to hit a brick wall when the dynamics of the orchestration get to a certain point; I wanted a piano with a felt like tone that wouldn’t get drowned out when the piece went anything above an mf. I was on a relatively limited budget and assumed that I would have to either sacrifice playability, or some of the sonic quality at the price I was looking for. At least, that was until I stumbled upon this 1907 Bluthner Style VII, which was sat in the back room of a music shop awaiting restoration, and a bit of a sorry sight. It was clickety-clackety, and alot of the notes didn’t work, but it was love at first sound. It underwent a five-month restoration, leaving the exterior finish untouched, which to me was a big part of the character and charm of the thing, with the added bonus of saving a huge chunk of money. I sampled this piano with a pair of Soyuz 013 FETs in three dynamic layers, raising the ultra-soft, felt-like tone to be more easily playable.