Hurriyet Daily News: Azerbaijani town making premier pianos

Hurriyet Daily News

Monday, August 1, 2011

İPEK YEZDANI

One of the world’s rare piano factories is in Azerbaijan after German master Hans Beltmann turned an old tobacco factory in the town of Qabala into a piano factory. All the pianos manufactured in the factory are hand-made by locals recruited did not have previous experience in the field

Hans Beltmann, the great-grandchild of the founder of world-famous Beltmann pianos, chose an unlikely place to launch a piano factory two years ago: a town in northern Azerbaijan.

Invited by the Azerbaijani government to set up shop, Beltmann has converted an old tobacco factory in the town of Qabala into a place to make pianos.

Workers in the piano factory had had no prior experience in making pianos, Beltmann told the Hürriyet Daily News in a recent interview. “They were chosen from the street. We taught them how to make a piano for months.” Now, all the pianos manufactured in the factory are hand-made.

After the steep learning curve, the Beltmann factory succeeded in turning out 500 pianos in 10 months.

“There 14 thousand parts in a piano, we bring these parts together with a secret design for the frame of the piano,” said Beltmann.

Beltmann uses old traditions in crafting his pianos. “First, we prepare the frame; one frame has a weight of 100 kilos. We make the metal frame with iron and 16 different parts – it is a secret design. Normally, you have to wait two and a half years to use it. But we produced a design, we put it in a sauna and it can be finished in 60 days. We are the only factory in the world that uses this system,” said Beltmann.

They drill 440 holes by hand in the piano while also preparing panels. “We don’t work with polyester, because it is very poisonous,” said Beltmann. “When I was invited to Azerbaijan to open this factory, my only condition was not to work with polyester, because I don’t want to kill people. We use natural, non-toxic products to finish the work.”

Beltmann procures the wood from a small village between Germany, Czech Republic and Austria where the climate remains stable, meaning the quality of the trees is dependable. “They have the nicest wood in the world; to make a tone excellent, you need a perfect soundboard,” said Beltmann.

The piano strings are also made by hand in the factory, as are the 88 different hammers. Each piano, meanwhile, is tuned seven times before it is deemed ready for use.

The factory also includes its own 330-person-capacity concert hall, while Beltmann said there were plans to create an on-site piano academy so that people could learn to play the instrument.

Beltmann pianos have one showroom in Germany and are planning to launch two new ones, one in Moscow and the other in Baku.

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