The Knabe Piano
(kah nah’ bee) – the official piano of the Metropolitan Opera, NYC
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A BRIEF PIANO HISTORY
Wm. Knabe & Co. was established in 1837 by Wilhelm Knabe, a German immigrant who learned piano building in the European craft guilds. He opened his piano factory that year in Baltimore, MD. His handcrafted pianos became commonly known as “Knabe Pianos” and earned recognition by professional piano performers long before other piano companies such as Steinway, Mason & Hamlin and Baldwin started their own piano production. Historically, it is Knabe and these other three companies that established what became the recognized American piano standard of tone and touch: a powerful and rich resonant sound married to a lightning speed keyboard response. These four companies met the demands of the piano performance community and became the international concert stage piano brands of their time in the late Nineteenth Century.
The Knabe Piano was the personal choice for scientists Albert Einstein and Thomas Edison, musicians Saint-Saëns, Elvis Presley, Arthur Rubenstein and Peter Tchaikovsky (who chose a Knabe Grand Piano to debut Carnegie Hall’s first concert). Knabe Pianos have been a centerpiece of American classical and popular music for almost two centuries.
Over the many decades of piano history Knabe and the other pioneer piano companies endured cycles of prosperity, financial losses, changes of ownership and evolutions in manufacturing technologies. Today the Knabe Piano is handcrafted in its dedicated manufacturing facility with corporate offices and distribution center located in the suburbs of Nashville, TN. Twenty-first Century logistics of production, international distribution and real time communications have combined to make the Knabe Piano line, with its American musical roots of tone and touch established over 185 years ago, an affordable performance piano that is musically qualified to grace every home, school room and house of worship in America.
