By Daniel Hartill, Staff Writer

NEW YORK – In this plain, white room in a corner of a century-old factory in Queens – beneath the shadow of the smokestacks that power New York City – resides some of music’s hallowed ground. And pianist George Lopez is giggling. Even before he sits down, his fingers strike the keys of the closest piano, one of six identical Steinway & Sons Model Ds. The concert grand pianos, considered by many to be the finest in the world, lie in a row with their lids propped up as if at attention. Lopez must choose one. He sat at the fourth, running the scales with his right hand as he gaped inside at the shining copper strings. He laughed quietly. Then, Beethoven filled the room.

A moment later, Lopez stood, took three hurried steps to his left and sat at the third piano, launching again into the master’s “Opus 23.”

In the following minutes, he played bits of Mozart, Rachmaninoff and Debussy at each of the six pianos, pausing now and then to smile and look around.

“It’s the Goldilocks moment,” said Dr. Donald Christie of Lewiston, who stood nearby, taking notes as Lopez commented on each.

“You know, this one’s too hard, and this one’s too soft,” the doctor said.

Lopez’s final selection – the piano that’s just right – would become the new jewel of Lewiston’s Franco-American Heritage Center at St. Mary’s.

Kicking the tires

An anonymous benefactor to the center made the journey possible, donating about $100,000 to purchase the handmade piano, the centerpiece of concert halls throughout the world.

Pianists cherish them the way violinists covet a Stradivarius.

Each Steinway takes one year to build. The Queens factory has 500 employees, but they turn out only eight new pianos each day.

“It’s not exactly like turning out kisses at the Hershey factory,” said Christie, the Franco center’s selection committee chairman. “Each piano is numbered. And each one has a character of its own.”

That character of the piano, the fine subtleties of the touch needed to press its keys and the brightness or warmth of its sounds, is the reason Christie brought Lopez.

The 37-year-old pianist and teacher from New Hampshire has performed at venues in New York, Paris, London and Cologne.

He knows the subtleties. He also knows the Franco center. He has also played there with the Midcoast Symphony Orchestra.

The Lewiston center would need a piano that could accompany a large orchestra or a single soprano in the spaces of the wood and stone former church, Christie said.

Like a race car driver testing the newest Porshe, Lopez would best know which one best suited the local roads.

“We brought George to see which one corners the best and which one is the fastest,” Christie said.

First, Lopez and Christie earned a rare glimpse of the piano’s construction.

From room to room

The factory was located on the edge of New York’s East River in an industrial neighborhood dominated by the Consolidated Edison Power Plant.

However, the Federalist-style main entrance to the piano company set it apart, its gold-colored logo decorating the space above the door.

Inside, photos of famous artists including Billy Joel and Roger Williams hung along office corridors. Then, the office spaces surrendered to the worn and battered factory floors, where workers still create the pianos much as they did 100 years ago.

In the Rim Room, a row of six workers glued layer after layer of quarter-inch-thick hard rock maple into a 24-feet-long strip of wood.

Then, using mallets and pulleys, they wrapped the flexible wooden strip around the mold that would, as the glue hardened, turn the strips into the curved outer rim of the piano.

In another room, workers using hand tools shaped and applied ribs to Steinway’s patented sound board, the part of the piano that reverberates the sound, much like the back of a violin.

Down the hall, a man sprayed piano lids with a lacquer mist. A waterfall of oil rained nearby, collecting the excess mist from the air.

And around a corner, newly assembled and strung pianos were rolled into the soundproof Pounding Room, where a contraption exercised the strings by playing each key 10,000 times in the space of one hour.

As Lopez moved from room to room, his smiled, sometimes stopping in awe.

He applauded when the Rim Room workers finished setting their mold and posed for pictures in a wood seasoning room, where the rims were stacked likes books on a shelf.

“I’ll never look at a Steinway the same again,” he marveled.

The choice

After 90 minutes, the tour ended back where it began: in the austere Selection Room.

Beside the six pianos from which Lopez would make his choice sat the first piano ever made by Henry Engelhard Steinway.

Covered in a veneer of Brazilian rosewood, it was shorter than the others and sat beneath a prominent “do not touch” sign.

Lopez walked to it, leaning over the velvet rope and putting his hands near the keys. He didn’t touch it, though. Instead, he walked back to the six.

He had a job to do.

“There’s no other place in the world where this happens,” Christie said. The instruments are too prized to get six Model Ds in one room.

At Steinway’s Boston distributor, M. Steinert & Sons, only one of these largest of grand pianos is on display at any time, said Marjorie Cooperman, a sales director there who helped organize the tour and selection.

Lopez turned serious. For about 30 minutes, he returned to each of the six pianos.

When he eliminated one, he closed the fall board to hide the keys.

His playing ranged from uptempo and happy to slow and contemplative, until he narrowed it to just two.

One seemed perfect for a large concert hall, he said.

“It’s got a big voice,” Lopez said. “Maybe too big.”

The other seemed just right.

“This one sounds like burgundy,” Lopez said, his smile returning to his face. “I think this one is it.”

Several minutes later, a purple ribbon hung from beneath the keyboard.

In gold lettering, it featured the Steinway logo and the word, “Selected.”

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