Steinway Hall

Steinway Hall (German: Steinway-Haus) is the name of buildings housing concert halls, showrooms and sales departments for Steinway & Sons pianos. The first Steinway Hall was opened in 1866 in New York City. Today, Steinway Halls and Steinway-Häuser are located in world cities such as New York City, London, Berlin, and Vienna.

A related concept by Steinway is Steinway Piano Galleries. Steinway Piano Galleries have all the same features as Steinway Halls but are smaller.

New York City

14th Street (1864–1925)

In 1864, William Steinway built elegant showrooms housing over 100 Steinway & Sons pianos at 71-73 East 14th Street, between University Place and Fifth Avenue in Manhattan. During the next two years, demand for Steinway pianos had increased dramatically. Construction of the first Steinway Hall was pushed by the need for expansion, increased promotion, and better presentation of pianos and music culture through regular live performances. William Steinway carried planning and construction of the first Steinway Hall with the full support and cooperation from the City of New York. The concert hall was designed with 2,000 seats, and had a concert stage for a full 100-piece symphony orchestra.

Steinway & Sons

Steinway & Sons, also known as Steinway, (ⁱ/ˈstaɪnweɪ/) is an American and German piano company, founded in 1853 in Manhattan, New York City, by German immigrant Heinrich Engelhard Steinweg (later known as Henry E. Steinway). The company's growth led to the opening of a factory in Queens, New York City, and a factory in Hamburg, Germany. The factory in Queens supplies the Americas and the factory in Hamburg supplies the rest of the world.

Steinway has been described as a prominent piano company, known for making pianos of high quality and for inventions within the area of piano development. Steinway has been granted 126 patents in piano making; the first in 1857. The company's share of the high-end grand piano market consistently exceeds 80 percent. The company's dominant position in the high-end piano market has been criticized, with some musicians and writers arguing that it has blocked innovation and led to a homogenization of the sound favored by pianists.

Steinway pianos have received numerous awards. One of the first is a gold medal won in 1855 at the American Institute Fair at the New York Crystal Palace. From 1855 to 1862, Steinway pianos received 35 gold medals. Several awards and recognitions followed, including 3 medals at the International Exposition of 1867 in Paris. The company holds a royal warrant of appointment to Queen Elizabeth II.

Hall

In architecture, a hall is a relatively large space enclosed by a roof and walls. In the Iron Age, a mead hall was such a simple building and was the residence of a lord and his retainers. Later, rooms were partitioned from it, and the space next to the front door became the entrance hall. Today, the (entrance) hall of a house is the space next to the front door or vestibule leading to the rooms directly and/or indirectly. Where the hall inside the front door of a house is elongated, it may be called a passage, corridor (from Spanish corredor used in El Escorial and 100 years later in Castle Howard) or hallway.

Other meanings

The term hall is often used to designate a British or Irish country house such as a hall house, or specifically a Wealden hall house, and manor houses.

In later medieval Europe, the main room of a castle or manor house was the great hall. In a medieval building, the hall was where the fire was kept. With time, its functions as dormitory, kitchen, parlour and so on were divided off to separate rooms or, in the case of the kitchen, a separate building.

Billy Joel

William Martin "Billy" Joel (born May 9, 1949) is an American pianist, singer-songwriter, and composer. Since releasing his first hit song, "Piano Man", in 1973, Joel has become the sixth-best-selling recording artist and the third-best-selling solo artist in the United States. His compilation album Greatest Hits Vol. 1 & 2 is one of the best-selling albums in the US.

Joel had Top 40 hits in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s, achieving 33 Top 40 hits in the US, all of which he wrote himself. He is also a six-time Grammy Award winner who has been nominated for 23 Grammy Awards. He has sold more than 150 million records worldwide, making him one of the best-selling artists of all time.

Joel was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame (1992), the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (1999), and the Long Island Music Hall of Fame (2006). In 2001, Joel received the Johnny Mercer Award from the Songwriters Hall of Fame. In 2013, Joel received the Kennedy Center Honors, the nation's highest honor for influencing American culture through the arts. With the exception of the 2007 songs "All My Life" and "Christmas in Fallujah", Joel stopped writing and releasing pop/rock material after 1993's River of Dreams. However, he continues to tour, and he plays songs from all eras of his solo career in his concerts.

Graham Fitch

Graham Fitch is an English pianist and piano teacher.

Biography

Fitch was the first prize winner in the Mieczyslaw Munz Piano Competition, and graduated with honours from London's Royal College of Music as a Hopkinson Gold Medalist. He came to the United States on a Fulbright Scholarship and completed his studies with Nina Svetlanova. A 1985 review in the New York Times described his playing as "unalloyed pleasure".

During the 1990s, Fitch performed in England, where he taught piano at the Purcell School. He was a solo recitalist at the Bournemouth Festival, and appeared in repeat engagements with the London Chamber Soloists on London's South Bank. In America he played solo and in concerts with the Trio dell'Arte. Fitch was an associate professor at the University of Cape Town until 2008. He gave recitals, masterclasses and keynote addresses at the Australasian Piano Pedagogy Conference and London's Royal Academy of Music and participated in the Stellenbosch International Piano Symposium in 2008.