The Modern Australian Piano

From the 1890s, for approximately forty years, the Australian piano industry grew to become one of the largest in the world. In 1925 the Australian piano manufacturer Octavius Bealeclaimed to be the largest manufacturer of pianos in the British Empire.¹¹² The Australian piano manufacturers Wertheim(1908) and Beale(1893) began their businesses as importers of German pianos into Australia in the 1880s.The German piano makers, Ronisch (1845)¹¹³ and Lipp (1831)¹¹⁴ exported pianos to Australia in large numbers, offering an affordable alternative to the English makes of Broadwood and Collard. Both Ronisch and Lipp won medals in the Sydney and Melbourne international trade Exhibitions of 1879 and 1882. ¹¹⁵ Australia enjoyed the advances in the worldwide piano industry initially as the colonised province of the United Kingdom, and then as the largest manufacturer of pianos in the southern hemisphere, between 1893 and 1930. Beale manufactured 95,000 pianos, and Wertheim 18,000 pianos. ¹¹⁶

There are two piano makers of handcrafted Australian pianos operating in the 21st Century. Wayne Stuart is the more prolific producer of pianos numbering 58 at the time of this writing. The other, Ron Overs operates more in the proposed design and technology, having produced 6 pianos. Both makers have very different philosophies of piano sound production and therefore their pianos contrast greatly in tone colour. In each of their disparate practices, the traditional dimensions and materials of soundboards are changed, and each maker implements contrasting string scaling though for similar objectives of tonal consistency, tuning stability and increased durability. Ron Overs continues to implement the traditional modern piano pinning and down-bearing of the strings to the bridge and soundboard. Stuart has replaced the traditional piano string pinning with the bridge agraffe which fundamentally changes how the string vibrates. With this change in traditional piano design, Stuart has radically changed the dynamic and tonal range of the sound. This research analyses the Stuart piano

¹¹¹Edmund M. Fredrick, “ERARD, SEBASTIEN,” 4Palmieri, Encyclopedia of the Piano,126.
¹¹²Keith T. Johns “AUSTRALIA, PIANO INDUSTRY, ” in 5 Palmieri, Encyclopedia of the Piano, 28-31.
¹¹³Carl Ronisch, Pianoforte manufaktur GmbH “About Ronisch” Ronisch since 1845, 2014, http://www.roenisch-pianos.de/en/about-roenisch.html
¹¹⁴“LIPP & SOHN PIANOS.” The Register (Adelaide, SA:1901-1929), 26 Jun 1903: 3. Web. 4 Feb 2016 http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article55430960.
^{115     5} Ehrlich, , 82-85.
^{116     6} Ehrlich, , 82-85. also see: “Beale –The art of timeless performance.” http://www.bealepianos.com.au/history.php .Jan 2016.