‘It has a soul': While the hammer falls on more old pianos, diehard fans persist

The Age

3 days ago

This story is part of the July 26 edition of Good Weekend. See all 15 stories.
What's more discordant than an old, out-of-tune piano? A collision between an out-of-tune piano and a sledgehammer: a cacophonous symphony of strings reverberating with soundboard, a howl of pain and rage. Equally off-key? Watching an excavator's grappling claws lift a vintage piano from a pile of household rubbish and drop it into a steel skip at a waste facility.
Anthony Elliott, a Sydney removalist who dumps two or three old pianos a week, keeps a video record of such moments. 'Unfortunately, this is what happens to them these days,' says Elliott in one video, as he pushes an old upright out of the back of a truck. 'Oh my god, oh my god,' cries someone out-of-frame as the piano crashes to the ground.
Despite the success of the ABC's heart-warming series The Piano, second-hand sales websites confirm Elliott's sad story. 'Beautiful but neglected old piano – getting binned unless it's rescued,' reads a Gumtree ad for a handsome old Rönisch, priced at an optimistic $5, for pick-up in western Sydney. 'Alternatively, you could help me by dismantling it and taking just the parts you want.' The photos show an ­antique upright in a garage. Bikes and a ­tumble of chicken wire fall against it.
How can it be that old pianos, household stalwarts for much of the country's post-­invasion history, symbols of achievement, ­refinement, family values even, now face such undignified endings?
It would be easy to blame television and the internet, digital pianos and keyboards, apartment living or contempt for heavy 'brown ­furniture'. But that's not the full story. Invariably, an old piano is not a good piano. 'I restore pianos, rebuild them, repair them. I also put a knife through them – pianos do not last forever,' says Mike Hendry, who has been tuning pianos in Melbourne for 45 years and, with his partners Sandra Klepetko and Peter Humphreys, runs Pianos Recycled, a company that repurposes cast-out pianos. 'We've given the piano a human quality, but it's a product and has been manufactured as a product for a long time.'
The piano's history in Australia is as long as European settlement: when First Fleet flagship HMS Sirius landed in Botany Bay, it ­carried surgeon George Bouchier Worgan – and his 'square piano', a harpsichord-like precursor to the modern instrument. When Worgan left the colony a few years later, he gifted his piano to Elizabeth Macarthur, the wife of rebel and pastoralist John Macarthur.
The industrial revolution in Europe enabled significant improvements in piano technology. Through the 19th century, the new upright pianos, buttressed with heavy cast-iron frames, flooded in from dozens of manufac­turers. When, in 1888, Frenchman Oscar Comettant visited Melbourne as a juror for the Centennial International Exhibition, he claimed extra­vagantly that there were 700,000 pianos in the colonies.
'How good a piano is depends on how arduous its life has been, whether it's been flogged to death or hardly played.'
Mike Hendry
Mike Hendry says the 'golden age' of piano-making came just before World War I. 'Some of the finest pianos ever made were made in that period. Even the average piano-makers were buying good spruce for their soundboards, using the right piano-making methodologies.'
Pianos came to be 'the first great material possession'. Until the 1920s, buying a home was beyond the reach of most so, for many, a piano was the biggest expense of their lives – and an attainable status symbol. Piano merchants ­contributed to the boom. 'Our time-payment plan has been a boon and a blessing to those of limited income – has been the means of brightening up thousands of Australian homes,' noted a Paling's Piano advertisement in The Daily Telegraph, Sydney, in June 1912.
But Hendry points out that anything built before World War I has now existed for more than a century. 'Something pre-1900 is now more than 125 years old; it's old not just because of age, but technology.' The Australian climate also plays a role. 'How good a piano is depends on how arduous its life has been, whether it's been flogged to death or hardly played; lived in outback Australia where heat stroke and ­dehydration has probably taken its toll or on Sydney Harbour, where salt in the air has ­probably ruined the strings.'
Loading
Unsurprisingly then, sites such as Gumtree and Facebook Marketplace are God's waiting rooms for a parade of elderly instruments with grained and varnished woodwork, elegant carved legs and panels, candle sconces, elaborate column details and manufacturers' brass name plates. Age has wearied most of them – missing or stuck ivory keys, snapped hammers, rusted strings, broken pedals – but their loved ones frequently cling to hopes for their futures: 'Loved by a family, now ready for its next home', 'Would love to see it go to a good home', 'A beautiful old thing with a living history'.
Deflation kicks in, too: In Williamstown, Melbourne, 'a gorgeous old' Eigenrac upright, was $100, now free. In Cherrybrook, Sydney, an 'Armstrong' piano, '1900s rare gem': $1. And, in almost every ad, addendums: pick-up only. Very heavy. Removalists needed.
In fact, the cost of moving an old piano ­frequently puts it into negative value. Anthony Elliott charges customers between $400 and $500 to take away their pianos. He has to ­factor in his time, fuel, wages for another pair of hands, and waste facility fees, which can be up to $500 a tonne. Typically, Elliott breaks down the instruments to retrieve recyclable steel from their innards and save on fees. 'It's my business,' he says, almost apologetically.
Earlier this year, Susette (who asked that her last name not be published), the owner of a late 19th-century Rönisch grand piano, started to look for someone who might like to give it a new forever home – gratis. The instrument, and a billiard table, came with a 19th-century property in the Blue Mountains that Susette and her partner bought in 2022.
In the years since, the grand house has ­echoed with guests' laughter – and sometimes with the piano's tinkling, even though it needs tuning. 'We've had some lovely experiences that will stay in our memory forever,' Susette says. One time, a guest sat down and performed Beethoven's Sonata Pathétique. 'The house shook, it was mind-boggling, the speed and power with which he played.'
But the changes to the floor plan the couple wants to make during their planned renovation of the heritage-listed house come at a cost: only one of the big things can stay. Friends have opinions: 'One lot of friends has been with the 'Save the piano' movement and one lot for 'Save the billiard table'.' Although the piano is of a similar age to the property, it was not ­resident through its early years; that knowledge has helped free the couple of sentimen­tality. Neither Susette nor her partner plays. 'Eventually, we decided that, among our friends, the billiard table brings people together more.'
If the decision about parting with the piano was straightforward, the parting itself was not. Initially, Susette and her partner offered their grand piano for free to a musical society and a singers' group in the mountains. Neither was interested. The couple then advertised on Facebook Marketplace, adding the condition that professional removalists were engaged to shift it. They had bites, but prospective buyers' interest vanished when removal quotes arrived.
Chiara Curcio, head of decorative arts, design and interiors for Leonard Joel in Melbourne, says there is only a limited market for old ­pianos, even grand pianos. 'There aren't many people on the market to buy them,' she says, adding that 'the baby grands, the more salon-type pianos', have the greatest resale value. Most recently, in 2023, Leonard Joel sold a ­walnut-cased Blüthner (Leipzig) Salon Grand Piano from the estate of former Melbourne lord mayor, the late Ron Walker. The estimate for the c. 1913 piano was $3000-$5000. It sold for $42,000. 'The provenance probably pushed it up to that price,' Curcio says.
'For me, acoustic piano has a soul. It's like a human being has a soul and a character.'
Zuzana Lenartova
But even as huge numbers of pianos are reaching the end of their lives, the instrument itself is far from facing extinction. Professional musicians still adore them, even as digital keyboards become part of their toolkit, and piano teachers see a flow of new students.
Sydney piano teacher Zuzana Lenartova ­instructs her students on a Yamaha grand piano but also has Yamaha's premium digital piano from the Clavinova range. 'Whatever they do, I always say they would never get to the point of replacing acoustic piano because for me, it has a soul,' says Lenartova. 'It's like a human being has a soul and a character. Whatever they do, they will never achieve what you can do with acoustic piano because in the end, it's digital, artificial.'
Indie-pop singer Jem Cassar-Daley has ­similar affection for acoustic pianos. After touring with her red Nord Stage 3 digital ­keyboard, she returns to the long-time family piano, a Beale, in her parents' Brisbane home. Cassar-Daley, the daughter of country music singer Troy Cassar-Daley, has childhood memories of the piano. 'I'd get in from school and drop my bag and Mum always joked about it, she was like, 'You couldn't walk past it ­without having a play.' '
Cassar-Daley finds that when she's writing music, richer compositions come when she's on a 'genuine' piano. 'The Beale is really beautiful, ideas flow.' She has known many people who've had to discard old pianos. 'My heart breaks a little bit for them, especially ones that have been passed down for generations.'
Mike Hendry's sentimental heart was the impetus he needed to start Pianos Recycled. About a decade ago, he watched as someone put a sledgehammer through an old piano. 'I thought, 'Oh, Jesus, there's a better outcome than that.' ' Now, at his Braeside premises, better pianos he receives are repaired, tuned and donated as 'street pianos' to schools. Others are broken down. Some of the salvaged timber is reincarnated into kits for woodworkers. Other cuts – end plates, front panels, inlaid panels and burr walnut, mahogany and maple veneers – are either sold or turned into coffee tables, drinks trays and pepper grinders. Piano pedals, copper wound bass string, sconces and manufacturers' name plates are sold individually. 'Our work is rooted in something the Japanese call mottainai, which emphasises the importance of not wasting resources.'
Loading
Nevertheless, Hendry estimates that Australians will toss out about 2500 pianos this year. They will end up at waste facilities, sledgehammered and splintered, consigned to skips, then, ultimately, to stinky landfill graves. 'We try to avoid doing it,' says ­removalist Anthony Elliott, showing another video in which he delivers an old piano to a charity shop. 'But sometimes you've just got to dump it.'
It never crossed Susette's and her partner's minds to dump their grand piano but, to find a new home for it, they had to revise their 'sales' strategy. They edited their Facebook Marketplace ad to say they'd pay for the ­piano's removal. A woman in regional NSW eventually put her hand up to take it. She wanted it as an ornament for her home.