"We will not change Schimmel in Europe," she says. June Wang, manager of Pearl River's foreign-trade department, says that the takeover - which both sides insist on calling a partnership - will work only if there is benefit for West and East. Given that scale, the 2,500-instrument output of its new Schimmel subsidiary is a drop in a very big bucket.īut Pearl River says its acquisition of Schimmel is about quality, not quantity. The Guangzhou-based company is now the world's No.1 producer of pianos, turning out 130,000 grands and uprights annually under various brand names of its own, as well as entry- and mid-level pianos under contract with Western companies. Look closer at the crowd, though, and you'll see a steady stream of trade visitors heading to the far left corner of the hall and the stand of Pearl River.
Hour after hour, the hall attracts scores of professional and hobby pianists, anxious to show off on concert grands they can't hear, let alone afford. In the Musikmesse piano hall, few seem concerned about - or even aware of - the changes afoot. A Chinese takeover of German auto makers would be a bombshell. But it's a sign of the times that, in the mainstream German media, the Chinese shopping spree has attracted little attention. By selling out to China, are German piano families securing their firms' futures, as some believe, or are they digging their industry's grave? It's an emotional debate - not surprising, given the piano's contribution to the cultural heritage of its home continent, and to Germany in particular. In German piano circles, few topics divide opinion so strongly as the arrival of the Chinese. But we will invest here to make sure that ‘Made in Germany' quality has a future." "There are concerns, of course, about the deal and the future path of the company. "Either we could stay independent, things would get ever more difficult, and eventually we'd become another dead German brand - or we could decide on a path that has a future," he said. Company president Hannes Schimmel-Vogel says the deal was a difficult decision, but the only sensible path left. In less than a year, two leading German piano families - with 311 years of piano history between them - have sold to Chinese buyers.įor Schimmel, the Pearl River takeover ends years of financial struggle. In January of this year, Braunschweig's Schimmel family sold a 90% stake in its company to China's state-owned Pearl River Piano Group. In April 2015, Braunschweig piano builder Grotrian-Steinweg announced that it had sold a two-thirds stake in its company to Parsons Music, of Hong Kong - which, only two years earlier, had purchased the Wilhelm Steinberg company. But Germany, arguably the instrument's spiritual home, is now undergoing one of the most dramatic changes in its nearly 300-year history of making pianos. Change is normal, and consolidation is nothing new. To be sure, the annals of the piano industry are filled with firms that grew, thrived, and died. Dramatic Changesīut the Musikmesse's demarcation line is deceptive in this age of globalization, when the world of pianos has never been more muddled. Everything to the left of the main aisle is from Asia, mainly Chinese companies with odd names like Otto Meister, Beijing, and Nanjing Schumann. To the right are the German pianos and other Europeans: Italy's Fazioli and the Czech Republic's Petrof (Austria's Bösendorfer was with its owner, Yamaha, in a different hall). The main aisle running through the center of the hall appears to be a Continental - and a cultural - divide. The unholy din makes it hard to hear anything you play - like offering an art lover a blindfolded tour of the Louvre.Īfter one quick circuit, I have my bearings. It's heaven for piano lovers, but also hell: so close to the world's greatest pianos, yet so far. Enter Hall 9 and you're blasted with stuffy air particles, all vibrating with cacophonous Chopin, grinding Gershwin, and, surfing atop the soundwaves, a brutal rendition of Beethoven's "Ode to Joy."įor a few days each year, Frankfurt welcomes the Who's Who of the piano world, led every other year by the big German brands: Blüthner, August Förster, Grotrian-Steinweg, Schimmel, Seiler, Wilhelm Steinberg, Steingraeber & Söhne, and more.
The piano hall of Frankfurt's sprawling Musikmesse sounds like a three-way collision of Tin Pan Alley, the Brill Building, and Phil Spector's Wall of Sound. Our correspondent attended the 2016 gathering, at a time of great change for the German piano industry. European piano makers convene there every other year. EACH SPRING, Frankfurt, Germany, hosts Musikmesse, one of the world's largest gatherings for the international music industry.