Blüthner

Blüthner is a German piano manufacturer established in 1853 and headquartered in Großpösna, Leipzig. It's one of the oldest piano companies in the world, after John Broadwood & Sons (established in 1808), Bösendorfer (1828), and Steingraeber & Söhne (1852), and alongside C. Bechstein and Steinway & Sons (both launched in 1853). Some of the notable composers and pianists who favored Blüthner pianos include Johannes Brahms, Gustav Mahler, Johann Strauss, Richard Wagner, Béla Bartók, Claude Debussy, Sergei Rachmaninoff, Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, Dmitri Shostakovich, Dodie Smith, Max Reger, Petronel Malan, George Formby, and Liberace. The company originated as a Leipzig workshop launched by Julius Ferdinand Blüthner (1824—1910) in November 1853. His business grew steadily, and Blüthner was a prolific innovator, patenting an original repetition action and, most notably, the "aliquot string" he invented in 1873 (a fourth, sympathetic string added to each trichord group in the grand piano's treble register). Julius Blüthner had eight children, and his three eldest sons, Adolf Max Blüthner (1861—1919), Paul Robert Blüthner (1867—1932), and Willy Bruno Heinrich Blüthner joined the family business as partners in the early 1890s. Three brothers earned a prestigious Kaiserlicher und Königlicher Hoflieferant royal warrant from the Austro-Hungarian court in 1894. "J. Blüthner" became one of the largest German makers by 1900, producing almost 5,000 pianos annually. In 1905, Julius Blüthner retired from the company at 81, passing the control to his sons. One of his last projects was sponsoring Blüthner-Orchester in 1907, a prolific ensemble that subsequently became Berliner Sinfonie-Orchester in 1925. Adolf Max, the first heir and company's technical director, had eleven children and four sons who survived him; however, none of them joined the company. (Willy Bruno's biography is virtually unknown). Thus, it was P. Robert Blüthner who continued running the business in the 1920s. To preserve the company's family name, Robert adopted his son-in-law, Rudolph Blüthner-Haessler (1903—1966), who inherited the firm. In 1936, Blüthner delivered a custom-built piano for the ill-fated LZ 129 "Hindenburg" Zeppelin airship, with a harp plate made of aluminum to save weight — the first-ever piano used in flight. Blüthner made other unique customizations, such as inverted keyboards for left-handed pianists and a one-off piano constructed with the Jankó keyboard (an alternative 264-key layout designed in 1882 by Hungarian pianist and inventor Paul von Jankó). The company also experimented with automatic reproducing pianos, offering the Blüthner-Hupfeld Player Piano equipped with a mechanism by Ludwig Hupfeld (1864—1949). The company reopened in 1948, even though its Leipzig factory was destroyed in World War II bombings. In 1966, Rudolph's son, Ingbert Blüthner-Haessler, took over the business. He remained with the company during the East Germany nationalization in the 1970s and regained full control after the fall of the Berlin Wall. In 1995, Ingbert's two sons, Dr. Christian and Knut Blüthner-Haessler, joined the company, overseeing the launch of a new factory in Störmthal near Leipzig.