Strings Detatched

In preparation for our grand collaboration with Leeds International Piano Competition this coming September we moved our original five wedge Pianodrome out of our Granton warehouse workshop down the road into another much bigger warehouse with a sea view which in the coming years is set to become an upcycling hub for the construction industry called Plan A (because there is no Plan B…) In its place in our workshop the three-wedger ‘Old Royal Pianodrome’ now awaits the installation of sparkly new playable pianos, two of which will have narrower guage keyboards perhaps more suited to smaller hands. 

This is a picture, taken by our very own Ant Ravelo, of almost a decade’s worth of piano strings removed from defunct pianos destined for sculpture and stored on top of an ancient Broadwood which until recently was tucked away behind a wedge in a corner out of sight and out of mind. 

It had been my hope for many years to find a use for this fantastic mess. Piano strings are sharp at the ends and they have a tight curl which catches clothes and makes it virtually impossible, once a string has joined the pile, to separate it out. The bass strings are wound with copper which is 20 times more valuable than the steel core but again almost impossible to separate. 

I really loved the concept Sean Logan came up with of bunches of strings making muscles to form a full size human figure, copper sinewed, trilling with sonic power. Actually I really loved this pile of strings as a thing in and of itself. Piled up high on the grand, each one containing the memory of years of musical vibration and each one a testament to the work of the hand that finally separated it from its piano, a riotous mass of chaotic energy arising from its piano plinth and frozen in time. I toyed with the idea of proposing it in its current form as a sculpture for the Leeds sculpture trail. 

My heart always sinks when someone suggests taking piano parts to the dump. I feel I have failed. But I had had ample chance to make something of this mess and no idea, however inspiring, had overcome the difficulty of tidying it up. The strings were taking up valuable space and were spiky and dangerous. It seemed their time was up. 

We piled them into the van and took them to the dump; more precisely the metal recycling. They gave us fifty quid and explained that rising energy prices mean that the last foundries in the UK are closing. Our strings would be sent to Turkey where they would be melted down and within 6 weeks they would become something else. The valuable copper can’t be separated from the steel, it simply becomes diluted to such a degree that it is negligible. It seems a shame. It seems also absurd that such valuable material, gleaned with such difficulty should be worth so little and shipped so far to be recycled. But what can you do? 

Ant’s wonderful photo will stand as the final artistic expression of these particular piano parts.