Transporting pianos is hard work, even for a dedicated and trained removals team, like us at the Piano Removal Company. Our decades of experience came in very handy this week as we moved upright pianos, grand pianos and piano accessories from storage. Luckily it was all ground floor work, but it is still a tough job.

Many general household removal companies advertise that they can move pianos – but they could be putting your piano, and themselves, at risk. At the Piano Removal Company we have all the correct equipment needed in order to move your piano safely and ensure we don’t injure ourselves in the process of moving the piano.

A piano is not only heavy, but the many thousands of delicate parts require skilled hands to move it without causing any internal or external damage. We move pianos across the country regularly, so put your piano in safe hands. Contact us on 0117 322 6149 for a competitive quote on a specialist service.

More and more, we’re seeing pianos being put directly into rooms with underfloor heating – something that can play havoc with a piano.

At a recent piano delivery in Bristol, the owners were rightly concerned about the effects that the underfloor heating would have on their new upright piano. It is recommended to keep pianos away from heat sources, such as radiators, but if a flat only has underfloor heating, there is no option to keep it away from direct temperature fluctuations. This can result in issues with tuning and other parts as the humidity levels affect the wood.

Our friends at The Piano Shop Bath provide a solution: underfloor heating mats, or carpets, for upright and grand pianos. These mats are designed with a heat shield that helps to protect the piano from the varying temperatures, plus they provide extra sound proofing and damp resistance.

You can buy underfloor heating mats for upright pianos and grand pianos from The Piano Shop Bath, who deliver nationwide.

1. The piano was invented in Italy in invented in 1698 Bartolomeo Cristofori.
2. Pianos have more than 12,000 parts, 10,000 of which are moving.
3. The piano is nicknamed “The King of Instruments” mainly for its wide tonal range.
4. The piano can reach the lowest note of the contrabassoon and the highest note of the piccolo. No other orchestral instrument can match this range.
5. Piano inventor Bartolomeo Cristofori made only a few pianos, preferring to focus on the harpsichord.
6. Cristofori called his invention the “gravicèmbalo col piano e forte,” which translates from the Italian as “harpsichord with loud and soft” and was then shortened to pianoforte.
7. A concert grand piano weighs over 1400 lbs and is 8’11”
8. Piano maker Challen, who originally manufactured in England, made the world’s longest grand piano. It was 11′ 8″, with 30 tons of string tension and weighed 2000 lbs.
9. Piano keys were made from ivory (hence the phrase, “tickle the ivories”), until the 1950s, where the expense, and environmental costs made manufacturers switch to plastic keys.
10. The tension of the strings on an upright is more than 18 tons. For concert grand pianos, the tension is more than 30 tons.
11. Henry Steinway was born Engelhard Steinweg, but changed his name after arriving in the US and starting his piano company.
12. The piano is considered to be in the percussion family because it only makes noise when a hammer hits a string.
13. ‘Piano’ is short for ‘pianoforte’, the full Italian name for the instrument.
14. The Steinway family has been making pianos since 1853.
15. There are 88 keys on a piano, made up of 36 black keys and 52 white keys.
16. 70% of a piano is made of wood.
17. A standard upright is at least 51” tall, while a console style is 42”. The smaller “spinet” can be just 3 feet tall.
18. Pianos generally have 220-230 strings.
19. Yamaha started production in 1887 and was the first Japanese piano manufacturer.
20. On a standard 88-note keyboard, the first note is A, while the last note is C.

From 60 countries, 197 entries were submitted to Bristol’s Watershed and from there a shortlist of seven projects was chosen.

The shortlist includes an array of imaginative and innovative installations, from a human orchestra of light through a park, natured turned musical instruments, interactive LED benches that light up buildings, and even giant clouds that would hang high above Bristol, sending messages in an exploration of cloud computing vs privacy.

See the shortlisted entries.

The winning installation will be announced on 9^th June with the winning piece of art unveiled this September in Bristol.

The winner will see their project realised in Bristol, become part of the community at Watershed’s Pervasive Media Studio, as well as have the opportunity to travel to Japan for Watershed and the British Council’s Playable City programme in Tokyo.

Playable City is run by Watershed and is supported by Bristol City Council, University of Bristol, University of the West of England, Bristol + Bath, The British Council, Catapult Future Cities and The Guardian.

Over two weeks, venues across Bristol will hold events with thousands of local musical young people.

The festival runs from Sunday 16th – Saturday 27th June and launches with a South Bristol Singing Day. Merchant’s Secondary in south Bristol will host a day of singing, with performances by local Bristol schools. This event has free admission.

Some highlights of the event:

17th June will see the Malago Musical Extravaganza at 1.30pm, St Mary Redcliffe Church. This will be a water-themed concert of song and instrumental pieces from schools linked by the river Malago, with performances from a massed choir, school choirs, and Ilminster School Orchestra. Tickets are available from the Colston Hall box office.

On 23 June at 1.15pm, at the Bristol Cathedral, an organ recital will be performed by Paul Walton and Josh Griffith, a 6th form organ student at Bristol Cathedral Choir School. 

Thu 25 Jun, 7pm, St George’s Bristol will host A World of Singing.  The 60 member Junior Bristol Youth Choir will be joined by the City of Bristol Choir and the Royal Mail Choir for a singing extravaganza celebrating our ‘wonderful world’. Tickets are available from the St George’s Bristol box office. 

The Sounds Inspiring Festival finale will be the BBC Young Musicians performance on Saturday 27^th June at St George’s Bristol. BBC Young Musician of the Year 2014 finalists, Sophie Westbrook (recorders), Eliot Gaston-Ross (percussion) and winner Martin James Bartlett (piano) will perform their competition repertoire. Tickets available from St. George’s Bristol box office.

For more information see the Sounds Inspiring Festival, Bristol brochure.

Describing it as a ‘sound alternative’, Barenboim played part of Beethoven’s Appassionata on his Steinway, then the same piece on his new piano to a selected group of journalists at the unveiling.

Barenboim conceived the new piano in 2011 and had it designed and built by Belgian Chris Maene, with the support of Steinway and Sons.

During a trip ot Siena, Italy, Barenboim played Fran Liszt’s 200-year old restored grand piano, where he concieved the idea for his new piano which was to merge modern technologies with the transparent sound quality and distinguishable colour registers of Liszt’s piano.

Of his new piano’s sound, Barenboim said, “There is a difference in the quality of the sound. It has more transparency, more clarity and by itself less blend but it gives you the opportunity to create a blend yourself as a player – and I like that.”

The design of pianos hasn’t changed largely in the last 100 years. Although Barenboim’s piano has a similar casing to modern concert grand pianos, it has a number of major differences including straight parallel strings, horizontal soundboard veins, a double bridge and newly-designed ribs and bracings.

These dramatic differences mean Barenboim’s piano has an alternative sound must be played differently. “It is a different relationship between the tip of the fingers and the key. And the pedalling … the transparency of the sound makes you rethink the use of the pedals.”

Daniel Barenboim will be performing Schubert’s piano sonata on his new piano at London’s Southbank Centre from 27 May – 2 June.

Contact The Piano Removal Company for a quote on your piano transport. We deliver across the UK.

The conference is where the piano industry gathers to learn new skills and hone their trade. Since 1913 the PTA has hosted the convention each year in a different town across the UK to maintain high standards in piano tuning and maintenance.

A number of pianos were transported to the event, including a handcrafted Shigeru Kawai SK-EX concert grand piano for Friday night’s concert by pianist Jenna Sung, who played Scarlatti, Haydn, Scriabin, Schumann & Shostakovich. The London-based South Korean pianist has been described by Gramophone magazine as “the talent of tomorrow – today”. In 2014 she won the Jaques Samuel Pianos Intercollegiate Piano Competition.

Specialist piano-industry traders, such as Fletcher and Newman, who have been supplying piano parts to tuners and technicians since 1876, also attended the conference.

Anne Burton was elected as the new President of the Piano Tuner’s Association at the convention.

Next year’s PTA Convention will be held at the Barnstaple Hotel in Devon from 11th  to the 14th May 2016