My Beautiful Feurich Piano

In April 2023, after years of only playing my Korg digital piano, I purchased my beautiful Feurich 122 upright from Wytze and Janet at Hoekstra Pianos.

Not intending to do more than look or possibly rent a second hand piano, it was clear life had other plans… Wytze, my partner and I all felt the musical magic that flowed the moment I played this one. I walked out of the store a little later as the proud owner of a sparkling new piano.

Unlike most purchases, this one has continued to amaze and inspire me. The clarity and separation of tone in the bass notes possible with modern engineering and technology still blows me away, but the real magic was in Wytze’s artistry in ‘voicing’ the instrument. By pricking the hammers with needles to soften them up in exactly the right way, piano technicians like Wytze can give a piano a unique timbre (tone colour) and can adjust soft/brightness to suit the owner’s taste.

After the first hundred hours of use, the impacting of hammers on strings hardened the felt of the hammers up a bit and the piano began to feel too bright for my taste. I wanted to get back to the tone I fell in love with when I first played it, so Wytze came out a couple of times to tweak the voicing on site.

One of my favorite sounds from the piano comes from the middle pedal which drops a sheet of felt between the hammers and strings. While this was conceived of as a ‘practice pedal’, the sound that comes from it is so rounded, warm and full that it has been used by many ambient composers as a feature. The tone is now thought of as ‘felt piano’ which is a perfect name both for the material that produces the sound and the expressiveness it offers… the music is in all senses of the word ‘felt’.

Here is a gentle late night improvisation on my felt piano…