Grand Obsession: A Piano Odyssey (Hardcover)

by Perri Knize (Author)
Key Phrases: songs without words, piano forum, temperament strip, New York, Beethoven Pianos, David Burton (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
Embarking on piano lessons in middle age, environmental journalist Knize sets out on an ancillary quest to find the perfect piano on a limited budget. She scours North America's piano outlets, immerses herself in the colorful online subculture of piano aficionados and grows fluent in the language of keyboard connoisseurship (a thin, shrill, brittle treble, she sniffs at a Steinway). Then she falls in love with Marlene, a Grotrian-Steinweg grand with the sultry and seductive tone of Dietrich herself; she's so smitten that she mortgages her house to buy it. Then disaster strikes: when shipped from the New York showroom to her Montana home, the piano sounds weird and echoey, and its glorious treble is dead. Desperate to restore Marlene's voice, Knize mobilizes an army of eccentric piano technicians (these lowly craftsmen emerge as wild-eyed artists in their own right), delves into the subtle intricacies that influence a piano's sound and ponders the haunting evanescence of music. Sometimes the mysticism—music 'is a way of exiting the petty self and entering the Over-soul... [i]t's about existing at a certain vibration' —gets thick enough to cut with a knife. But Knize writes in a wonderfully evocative, lushly romantic style, and music lovers will resonate to her mad pursuit of a gorgeous sound. (Jan.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From The Washington Post

Reviewed by Eugenia Zukerman

"A soul seems to reside in the belly of this piano, and it reaches out to touch mine, igniting a spark of desire within me that quickly catches fire," writes amateur pianist Perri Knize in Grand Obsession. "This disembodied being is sultry and seductive, as if Marlene Dietrich reincarnated as the soul of this piano, and is using my hands to belt out a torch song. If only I could play this piano every day, I think, I could be the pianist I have always dreamed of becoming."

Knize's dreams were first inspired by her father, a professional clarinetist. "Some people are passionate about music," she writes. "My father was ferocious about it." She studied piano at the Mannes College of Music in New York but went on to other things -- she is currently a reporter specializing in the environment. At the age of 43, she was seized with an overwhelming need to fulfill her musical aspirations.

Searching for a new instrument along New York's Piano Row -- 58th Street between Broadway and Seventh Avenue -- Knize finds a German Grotrian grand, complete with the soul that she writes so glowingly about, and it sets her off on a three-year adventure of epic proportions. Refinancing her house to pay for it, she has the Grotrian, which she calls Marlene, shipped to her home in Montana, only to find that "in place of the glorious, pure, pealing clarity and sonority . . . is a hoarse, broken voice. Marlene is gone." Desperate to restore Marlene's sound to its former beauty, Knize consults piano experts and aficionados, piano lovers, piano builders, tuners, technicians. When none of the efforts is curative, she becomes as frantic and determined to find the cause as a mother whose child's illness is deemed undiagnosable. She dives into the subculture of the piano from American designers and dealers to European loggers and builders, traveling from the Bronx to Braunschweig to search for answers.

Knize's passion for her piano is intense, and if it seems excessive, she nonetheless hooks you into her obsession with writing that is lucid yet lyrical, analytical yet deeply affecting. From the opening of her "prelude," you know you're in the hands of an observant naturalist with an artist's sensibility: "Maier Christian sits on a log in the sun, his boots half-buried in slushy snow. . . . Several yards farther down that road, four loggers take their midday nap atop the trunk of a felled giant, warming themselves like a family of painted turtles."

Modesty and self-awareness add to Knize's appeal, as does her desire to be a better pianist: "I want a grander, more ambitious goal, one that better fits my fantasy of possessing an innate, neglected talent that will surge to prominence, overcome all odds and my handicap of a late start, and surprise everyone by achieving greatness." When she talks to a fellow amateur who shares her attraction to the mysteries of music, she wonders, "At midlife we're called by the inexplicable. What is it that calls to us?"

Throughout her journey, Knize introduces us to a fascinating mix of characters, including Carl Demler the piano dealer, Marc Wienert the technician, Uwe Gille the loading dock master, and Martin Walter the bellyman (the person who glues in the sounding board, the sheet of slightly curved wood that will provide amplification for the piano). Knize's description of each person is novelistic and evocative. The bellyman, for example, is "boyish: an adolescent's outsized arms, tousled, dark hair, dimples bedded in a nascent stubble, an air of rebellion. But Martin Walter also carries in his gestures a sense of purpose."

Along with its moving personal narrative, Grand Obsession offers a comprehensive lesson in piano making, piano tuning, piano delivery, piano everything, and it's all fascinating. Did you know that "the fastest-growing group of new piano students is adults over the age of twenty-five" or that "for a mere $4,595, you can record yourself playing a concerto with the Prague Radio Symphony Orchestra," or that in 1920 "there were many hundreds of American piano makers. Today, there are only five."

What exactly was Knize looking for? "It did seem that when I was embraced by the shimmering beauty of Marlene, I was taken to a place of inner truth," she writes, "or at least transcendence. When I was not near that, I yearned for it, for something half remembered."

The truth is that a piano's sound changes depending on many factors. "The thousands of moving parts can only sustain correct relationships with each other briefly," Knize explains. "A freshly tuned piano is a golden coach that turns back into a pumpkin with the dawn." In Grand Passion, Perri Knize has written a memoir about passion and ephemerality with lasting elegance and grace.

Copyright 2008, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 371 pages
• Publisher: Scribner; 1 edition (January 8, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0743276388
• ISBN-13: 978-0743276382
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.1 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (56 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #316,212 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

35 of 40 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars If You Like the Piano, You're Going to Love This Book!, December 26, 2007

By	Frank Baxter "PianoWorld.com" (Pompano Beach, FL United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I've been involved in the piano business for over 35 years, and I own a popular piano web site. By now I thought I'd pretty much heard and seen it all. But when I got this book I literally couldn't put it down.

We can all be thankful that Perri's background as a reporter, author, and pianist came together when her "obsession" to find the perfect piano with the perfect sound drove her to write this extraordinary book based on her experiences.

Her adventures reach far beyond the scope of the average piano buyer. In fact, she goes places even those of us "in the business" have never been. Luckily for all of us, she takes us along for the ride.

From the Pacific Northwest to Piano Row in New York, from basement workshops to the Alps of Austria, Perri follows wherever her questions lead her. The more riddles she solves, the more new questions pop into her head, and off she goes again to chase down the answers.

Along the way she meets some of the most interesting and talented characters in the piano business. From each of them she gathers a few more pieces of the puzzle she is trying desperately to solve.

What is it that makes her "Marlene" (yes, she named her piano, and no, that isn't as odd as you might think) sound and play the way she does when everything is right? And more importantly, what caused Marlene to lose her voice, and how will she ever get it back?

Perri will stop at nothing to find these answers, and that is part of the charm and fun of this book.

For example, not content with the explanation of where her soundboard came from, or how it was made, Perri travels to Europe, hikes into the very forest where the trees used to build her piano's soundboard were cut, learns about how to select trees for tonewood, and then goes on to watch the craftsmen who actually created the soundboard and built the belly of her piano practice their art.

Even if you have no interest in the piano at all, this book is a good read based on the sheer fun of following Perri on her adventures. And if you do have any interest in the piano (as I suspect you do or you wouldn't have read this far), this book is a must have!

In it you will learn about the emotional effect music has on us all, and the camaraderie musicians of all stripes share. You will also learn more than you could have imagined about what goes into making and caring for a piano, and about the many people behind the scenes that contribute to the finished product.

But most of all, you will learn why music in general, and the piano in particular, captures our hearts and minds and transports us to another place. Thank you, Perri Knize.

- Frank Baxter
Founder/Owner
PianoWorld.com

19 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars You Might Love this Book Even If You Don't Like the Piano, December 29, 2007

By	Charles Pengilly - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I don't like pianos or piano music, and I can't stand being in New York City. Nonetheless, like Mr. Baxter, I had trouble putting this book down.

My reading experience was only peripherally related to music. But it had a lot to do with things I do care about: what it means for something to be beautiful, and how elusive that quality is; the interplay between intuition and sensation; the obsessive need to understand what it's all about and the impossibility of succeeding in that quest. Although it's great that this book has already found a home among the world's pianophiles, I think the vehicle could just as well have been butterflies or motorcycles or food or mountain climbing.

The book I read was an engaging, sensitive, and insightful discussion of the nature of aesthetic experience. It happened to have a lot of pianos and eccentric piano people in it, but it really deserves a much broader audience than it has so far.

15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Grand Obsession: Grand Read, April 8, 2008

By	Bil Cusack (Houston) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I ran across two mentions of this book in one day, and knew I had to read it. I recommend it to certain individuals who are interested in learning all they can about music, sound, instruments, and what moves us.

Being someone who is easily moved to tears myself, I had wondered about the complexity of my experience, who hasn't? Perri Knize wondered and jumped down the rabbit hole, in pursuit of the ultimate answer.

I have to admit to my reactions in the different sections of the book. As a soon-to-be-retired piano dealer, her pursuit of a practice piano rubbed me with the same irritation I get whenever someone comes in dissatisfied with everything on the floor. In the story, it (her dissatisfaction) opens the door to the quest that gets bigger as time unfolds.

As a technician, her kind portrait of piano technicians and their egos helped me see my fellow techs in a new light.

As a musician, reading Grand Obsession brought me back to paying more attention to (piano) tone.

In an age when manufacturing standards are the highest they've ever been, and consumer awareness it's most demanding, it seems to me more people than ever don't know how to listen.

Grand Obsession is not a quick read, it plods in places. I recommend staying with it until the end because ultimately, we learn amazing things about music, musicians, spirituality, instrument makers, quantum physics, and ourselves.