Bogányi piano as featured in the Crain Currency
Famed Hungarian pianist Gergely Bogányi has introduced two new piano models available for purchase starting at $300,000.
The handcrafted pianos were made in collaboration with designer Péter Üveges. Bogányi’s new models include his B-292 full-size grand concert piano and the smaller B-262. Both models feature a carbon-fiber composite soundboard to enhance sound clarity and projection, as opposed to the wooden soundboards of traditional pianos.
Gergely Bogányi in concert on his own Bogányi piano
Reimagining tradition: Gergely Bogányi introduces the B-262 and B-292 models
https://www.musicalamerica.com/news/newsstory.cfm?storyid=56009&categoryid=5&archived=0
The biggest piano redesign and innovation in over 200 years.
INTRODUCING THE STUNNING $300,000 PIANO BY HUNGARIAN PIANIST GERGELY BOGÁNYI: A DESIGN MARVEL RESEMBLING APPLE’S AESTHETIC
https://theluxurylifestylemagazine.com/introducing-the-stunning-300000-piano-by-hungarian-pianist-gergely-boganyi-a-design-marvel-resembling-apples-aesthetic/Luxury lifestyle magazine features Bogányi piano
Red Bogányi piano and Ferrari at Hungaroring F1
The Guardian review - Gergely Bogányi’s ‘Batpiano’ has a tone to match its spaceship looks
An innovative review by the Guardian at the International Press launch of the Bogányi piano in Budapest 2015. The unique design was certainly a topic of conversation!
The first big redesign of the piano in more a hundred years has a unique tone, according to those who’ve played it in Budapest – ‘like you are hovering above gravity’
Grammy award-winning jazz pianist Gerald Clayton performing at the Bogányi piano's international launch in Budapest January 2015.
So celebrated is Franz Liszt in Hungary that if all its statues of the composer came to life they could form a small orchestra.
So it is fitting that the country that produced the 19th-century composer should also produce perhaps the most startling upgrade to the instrument that made his name: the piano.
Some are calling it the Batpiano because of its sleek, Gothamesque look. For others, it’s a cross between an art deco sculpture and something out of Star Trek. Or else a Steinway reimagined by Umberto Boccioni.
“There have been no major developments in piano construction in over 100 years,” said Gergely Bogányi, when last week he gave the Guardian a preview of his 10-year project at a workshop in Budapest. He has already spent 8,000 working hours on it.
The big question, of course, is what does it sound like? Such is the sheer visual presence of the gleaming “Bogányi” that it is surprising to learn that the instrument is a few centimetres shorter than a Steinway model D.
From behind the keyboard, the sound is sustained and airy, as the curved left leg – it has only two – directs the sound from under the piano, as well as from above, creating a spacey effect.
While the tone of the instrument, with its patented carbon composite soundboard, is rich, the action is incredibly light, recalling older models from the dawn of the piano, before manufacturers began to prioritise power to appeal to romantics such as Liszt.
Bogányi explained that this smoothness is down to his use of the modifications first suggested, but never widely used, by the 19th-century Hungarian piano maker Lajos Beregszászy. He installed an agraffe system – a guide anchoring the strings – on the bridge.
“Right on cue to support his claims of finesse combined with power, Bogányi crashes into Robert Schumann’s Carnaval, then follows with the rolling arpeggios of Liszt’s Liebestraum (Dreams of Love).
Tamás Horváth, a sound engineer at Bartók Rádió, which broadcast the concert, said: “I can certainly say it has a unique tone, although this is characteristic of all great piano producer products, such as Steinway, or Bösendorfer – they all have a specific sound.”
Gerald Clayton, a four-time Grammy award winner who also performed at the piano’s debut concert this week, has had more playing time on the Bogányi than most.
“It feels like you are in a spaceship, like you are hovering above gravity,” he said. “When you play a lot of notes, or you play a chord, the sensation is different. It’s super-clear.” Horváth agreed that the Bogányi had “a great sound for jazz pieces”.
Bogányi said his instrument is different from other attempts to reinvent the piano: notably Peugeot’s collaboration with Pleyel and Audi’s with Bösendorfer. “They are design pianos, but we have focused on everything that was connected to the sound,” Bogányi said.
“I never did what they wanted me to do,” added the floppy-haired former wunderkind, now 41, who was jokingly introduced by his press officer as “Liszt reborn”.
The fundamental design of the piano has remained unchanged for about 130 years, following 200 years of evolution from Bartolomeo Cristofori di Francesco’s prototype of around 1700.
Horváth stops short of calling his compatriot’s invention a paradigm shift, however: “We will have to wait to find out how the instrument will sound after it has aged a little bit, as pianos acquire their specific sound over years.”
And for anyone planning to reinvent an instrument for themselves, Bogányi said he was not exactly sure how much money he has spent on his labour of love over the last decade, but estimated the overall project cost just under €1m (£750,000).
So where can you get one? The piano will not start retailing until later in the year, and you will have to save up. Bogányi said. “With these materials, it will definitely not be cheap.”
New ‘bat piano’ takes wing in Newport - Boston Globe
One of our first reviews from our Newport Music Festival appearance in 2016 by Jeremy Eichler, the Globe’s classical music critic, and the recipient of an ASCAP Deems Taylor Award for music criticism.
Geregely Bogányi in the Rosecliff mansion, during the Newport Music Festival 2016.
NEWPORT, R.I. — Somewhere near the heart of a classical performer’s art is a deceptively simple assignment: to imagine an ideal sound in one’s mind, and then to realize it on an instrument.
But oh, the details! The sound in one’s mind is by definition perfect. But the sound that comes out of your piano? And yes, it is often professional pianists, more than most others, who must cope with the added challenges of routinely playing on instruments that are not their own. Even players with the most well-honed techniques can struggle with mundane difficulties: tuning, the action of a sticky key, the sensitivity of wood reacting to changes in weather — in short, all the physical limitations of a complex mechanical object whose basic design was conceived in a distant century and, since then, essentially frozen in time.
The pianist Gergely Bogányi grew up in Hungary and in Finland, and, by his own description, experienced the gap between the sound in his mind and what he could produce at the keyboard with a special bitterness. “I was not spoiled by good pianos around me,” he says, “so I was basically always suffering.”
Bogányi took the unlikely step of trying to address the problem, not just by buying a better instrument but by starting from scratch. Over the last decade, working with a team of engineers, designers, and manufacturing specialists, he has rethought and redesigned the modern piano. The result is the new “Bogányi piano.” This week the pianist and a team of European colleagues came to the Newport Music Festival to introduce the instrument, presenting its first North American performances.
Visually the piano is something to behold, with a sleek black curvature that has earned it the nickname “bat piano.” Its footprint is roughly similar to that of a conventional concert grand, but it has no third leg, lending it from certain angles the illusion of floating in air. The piano is manufactured outside of Budapest in a plant that also produces components for the interiors of luxury cars. Which makes sense, as this piano looks a bit like what might come off the lab bench after splicing the DNA of a Steinway and a Lamborghini.
Many aspects of the piano’s mechanics have been rethought, but the heart of the innovation lies, as it were, under the hood. It is built around a carbon-fiber soundboard instead of a wooden one, with the aim of creating what the marketing team describes as “a more stable, crisp and clear sound” — one that, it is claimed, remains steady despite changes in humidity or temperature.
It’s well and good to read about such things, but something else entirely to hear the piano in action. On Thursday morning in the ballroom at the Elms, Bogányi played an all-Chopin program for a packed crowd of curious festival listeners. The weather gods even did their part for the experiment by serving up a stiflingly muggy day.
From the opening B-minor Scherzo, the instrument’s sound was notable for a pellucid clarity in its upper registers and for an unusual power in its tolling, clarion bass notes. Up and down the keyboard, the sound materialized at the start of notes with a forthright ping, as if the signal to noise ratio were higher than typical. The overall quantity of sound was also impressive, threatening at times to overpower the room and sparking, at least in this listener, a keen curiosity to hear this turbocharged piano in front of a full orchestra. One also wondered, in particular, how it would sound in repertoire of a modernity closer to its own.
Gergely Bogányi performs on the specially designed “Bogányi piano” at the Newport Music Festival.
NEWPORT, R.I. — Somewhere near the heart of a classical performer’s art is a deceptively simple assignment: to imagine an ideal sound in one’s mind, and then to realize it on an instrument.
But oh, the details! The sound in one’s mind is by definition perfect. But the sound that comes out of your piano? And yes, it is often professional pianists, more than most others, who must cope with the added challenges of routinely playing on instruments that are not their own. Even players with the most well-honed techniques can struggle with mundane difficulties: tuning, the action of a sticky key, the sensitivity of wood reacting to changes in weather — in short, all the physical limitations of a complex mechanical object whose basic design was conceived in a distant century and, since then, essentially frozen in time.
The pianist Gergely Bogányi grew up in Hungary and in Finland, and, by his own description, experienced the gap between the sound in his mind and what he could produce at the keyboard with a special bitterness. “I was not spoiled by good pianos around me,” he says, “so I was basically always suffering.”
Bogányi took the unlikely step of trying to address the problem, not just by buying a better instrument but by starting from scratch. Over the last decade, working with a team of engineers, designers, and manufacturing specialists, he has rethought and redesigned the modern piano. The result is the new “Bogányi piano.” This week the pianist and a team of European colleagues came to the Newport Music Festival to introduce the instrument, presenting its first North American performances.
Visually the piano is something to behold, with a sleek black curvature that has earned it the nickname “bat piano.” Its footprint is roughly similar to that of a conventional concert grand, but it has no third leg, lending it from certain angles the illusion of floating in air. The piano is manufactured outside of Budapest in a plant that also produces components for the interiors of luxury cars. Which makes sense, as this piano looks a bit like what might come off the lab bench after splicing the DNA of a Steinway and a Lamborghini.
Many aspects of the piano’s mechanics have been rethought, but the heart of the innovation lies, as it were, under the hood. It is built around a carbon-fiber soundboard instead of a wooden one, with the aim of creating what the marketing team describes as “a more stable, crisp and clear sound” — one that, it is claimed, remains steady despite changes in humidity or temperature.
It’s well and good to read about such things, but something else entirely to hear the piano in action. On Thursday morning in the ballroom at the Elms, Bogányi played an all-Chopin program for a packed crowd of curious festival listeners. The weather gods even did their part for the experiment by serving up a stiflingly muggy day.
From the opening B-minor Scherzo, the instrument’s sound was notable for a pellucid clarity in its upper registers and for an unusual power in its tolling, clarion bass notes. Up and down the keyboard, the sound materialized at the start of notes with a forthright ping, as if the signal to noise ratio were higher than typical. The overall quantity of sound was also impressive, threatening at times to overpower the room and sparking, at least in this listener, a keen curiosity to hear this turbocharged piano in front of a full orchestra. One also wondered, in particular, how it would sound in repertoire of a modernity closer to its own.
For his part, Bogányi played his Chopin selections with sensitivity and Romantic sweep. It was, thankfully, clear that for him the new instrument remains a means to older musical ends. All of this said, with a price tag of $300,000 and a culture among classical musicians that remains reflexively suspicious of modern instruments — even those made to look old — it’s difficult to picture the Bogányi becoming commonplace. But one has to give credit to the imagination and sheer audacity behind this project. And at this initial hearing, the crowd responded in that spirit, with an ovation clearly directed at more than just a fine performance.
GERGELY BOGÁNYI
Presented by Newport Music Festival. At the Elms, Newport, R.I., July 14
Jeremy Eichler can be reached at jeichler@globe.com