Peter -

> You wrote in MMD:  "It was very shiny but sounded pitiful and its
> main attraction, as for all Eastern bloc products, was its price.
> There was also a Roenisch which was somewhat better."
>
> I saw a Krasnya Oktober (Red October) Soviet piano ten or fifteen
> years ago.  Very shiny medium-sized upright.  Worst new piano I have
> ever encountered, far worse than the bottom-of-the-line American or
> Korean pianos.  It was literally falling apart.

Interesting.  One of the well-known (and in his case, highly
thought-of) restorers in the London Player Piano Group, Norman Evans,
was an agent for Estonia and Belarus pianos, made respectively in
Estonia and Belarussia.

(He wheedled a brand-new concert grand out of Estonia on the
understanding that he could get a top-class recital on it in London and
when it came, put an Ampico action in it and did just that, under PPG
auspices, in 1977 or 78.  One of the outcomes was the Oiseau-Lyre
series of Ampico recordings which were made using it in Kingsway Hall,
London, but not issued until well into the 1980s.)

I had a very aged aunt, a pupil of Myra Hess in fact who had a debut
in the Wigmore Hall as long ago as 1921, who was moving to sheltered
housing where there would be no room for her beloved Bechstein Model B
grand of about 1907.  I had heard an utterly supreme upright 1926
Bechstein in Edinburgh and suggested she try one.

The London second-hand dealers were unhelpful but the player grapevine
told me of an 1890 Bechstein which Norman had for sale for only =L=900.
Both the date and the price told me this would probably be a wild goose
chase -- it was, as I soon checked, a straight-strung version -- but
Aunt Kathleen was game and went on the train to Hornsey to have a look
at it.

I think Norman saw her coming.  The Bechstein was no good at all but
next to it was a new Belarus upright that he'd just finished prepping
and it was silky and smooth and ... =L=900.  She bought it on the spot.

I must admit I thought it was pretty good value.  It sounded not at all
unlike a British Welmar or Knight, respectable instruments which at the
time were four times the price.  But once it had been in her new little
home a week or two, with the plaster still drying out, it seized up
solid.  Norman made a couple of visits and eventually even took the
action back to Hornsey.  Every time it came back to Sussex, it seized
up again.

After about two years, though, she'd played it a lot and the house had
dried out and it became just another not-at-all-bad piano.  Now she's
gone my cousins are squabbling about who she promised it to.  (She told
me outright, and my evidence has made me suspect on one side of the
family.)

So Estonia?  Superb if you bought the top line.  Belarus?  With proper
prepping, it worked and was, let us face it, just incredible value.  It
certainly sounded way superior to any of the middle-rank English makes
whose bones now litter the highway of history.

I think the piano-makers of Eastern Europe have laboured under
incredible disadvantages and we shouldn't judge them until they've
had a chance to catch up on such things as preparation and service.

Dan Wilson, London