86 The Economist May 7th 2022
Obituary Franz Mohr
SeveraldecadesagoTheEconomist’s NewYorkofficewasabove
the old showroom of Steinway & Sons, pianomakers, on West
57th Street. The way to the office was a staircase to the left; to the
right the glossy black pianos stood among rich carpets, and cus
tomers could be seen and heard shyly, or boldly, trying them out.
The showroom, however, was not Franz Mohr’s place. His
realm was the basement, where the beautiful concert grands were
stabled within bare walls, out of the daylight, in ideal relative hu
midity of 4565%. Here, in his black Steinway apron, he was in
nearconstant attendance, ears cocked to his tuning fork to hear
how quickly, after he struck a key, the wave died and the note was
“in”, while his right arm was thrust into the innards of each crea
ture, moving his tuning hammer along the tuning pins. When
electronic strobes came in, he had no time for them. To set pitch, a
tuner could rely only on hearing and touch.
Each piano had a different character. To make two sound exact
ly alike was an impossibility. No doubt the good Lord—to whom
he turned constantly, as to his tuning fork, to hear the perfect
pitch of his life—could make two the same, but where would be
the joy in that? So one piano would have a big, bombastic voice,
just right for Rachmaninov, and another would be refined, for
chamber music. No piano could give what wasn’t there. He could,
however, gradually adjust them, by both tuning and full mechan
ical regulation, to be as close as possible to the sound the owner
wanted. Day in and day out, that was what he was doing.
Into this room the great pianists came, looking for an instru
ment to play in public. He would brim then with pride and excite
ment, but kept his mouth shut, unless the maestro asked a question. He knew his place. In his time at Steinway he was the chief
tuner for Arthur Rubinstein, Van Cliburn, Glenn Gould and, more
than anyone, Vladimir Horowitz, who in the 1980s was perhaps
the greatest in the world. His awe at their art did not alter his feel
ing that the pianos were his, as much as theirs.
Their tastes were highly distinctive. Horowitz wanted a bril
liant response from a petallight touch, which most other pianists
could barely control. He also liked (and here Mr Mohr’s German
English ran out), a bit of “nasalness” in it. Rubinstein preferred a
warmer, darker sound, and forbade the keys to be cleaned because
it made them slippery. When Mr Mohr, new to his service, pol
ished them, he had to apply a doublepssstof hairspray to restore
their resistance. Gould wanted the hammers to make a drumming
at certain speeds, so he fixed that for him, though it hurt.
As the stars toured the world he went with them, or firstly with
their chosen pianos and a box of tools of his trade. Anxiously he
oversaw their disassembly at Steinway and their reassembly in the
concert hall, where he would tune for hours on end, sometimes
going without his dinner. Often he was the only living creature
there, apart from the piano itself. But he loved that! He thanked
God he could stay in the background, with a servant heart, unless
things went wrong. For they did: a stool set too high in Chicago,
propelling Horowitz into fury, and a broken string, a bass A flat, at
Carnegie Hall. He went on to fix both, gathering applause and tak
ing bows, but could not leave those lonely stages fast enough.
In his youth, growing up in wartime Germany, he had never
considered such a role. He had learned the violin, studied music at
Detmold and Cologne, and hoped to be a soloist. But the Lord had
planned a different future for him. Tendonitis crippled his left
wrist, and he had to give up playing. He answered an ad that led
him to an apprenticeship in piano mechanics, then another that
took him in 1962 to Steinway in New York. It was not his dream
path, but it still had to do with music. In a way it mirrored an event
he had never forgotten, the burning in a bombing raid on Cologne
of the Academy’s great organ, which responded to the winds that
followed by groaning, then singing, through the fire.
Working with the maestros was eyeopening in itself. Cliburn,
a good Texas boy, was too lazy to practise except “onstage” (he told
him), and collected dozens of leather suitcases. Gould, before a re
cording, would soak his hands in water as hot as he could stand it,
then put on gloves, then take them off to play. He made the techni
cians despair both with his humming as he played, and with the
squeaks of the foldup chair he insisted he must sit on.
It was Horowitz, though, and Horowitz’s piano, with whom Mr
Mohr’s life became most tightly entwined. After a few delicate
years, Horowitz would have no tuner but him. The piano in ques
tion, one of six the maestro used, had been built for him by Stein
way in 1941, and regulated so lovingly by Mr Mohr since 1965 or so
that its insides were as good as new. On this Horowitz could dis
play his whole range, from whispering pianissimito thundering
fortissimi: mostly because it was a Steinway, as Mr Mohr loyally in
sisted, whose secret lay in the quality of the wood in it, but also be
cause he had given a really high tension to the repetition spring.
After Horowitz’s death in 1989 he continued to care for it, tuning
and regulating it and accompanying it on tour round America, so
that other pianists could play it—though this would not, he cau
tioned, no way! make them play like Horowitz afterwards.
Life with the maestro was not always easy, but he could cope.
When the cry went up once in rehearsal, “Franz, there’s something
wrong with this key!”, he told Horowitz that he could fix it in half
an hour, a good chance for the maestro to take a coffee break. The
break cured the problem. He did not need to touch the key.
His duties came to include holding Horowitz’s hands before a
concert. They were very cold. “I admire you with your warm
hands,” the maestro said once. He also said, “Franz, you are the
most important person here.” “No, Maestro, you are!” “No, no,”
came the reply. “If the piano’s not right, I’m not going to play!”nTravels with a pianoFranz Mohr, Steinway’s chief tuner for 24 years, died on
March 28th, aged 94