🎹 The Evolution Of The Upright Piano | C. Bechstein A6 | Bechstein A124 Redesign 🎹

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Upright pianos are one of life’s necessities, but they’re seldom a thrill. The idea is to take the parts of a grand piano that occupy the most floor space and tip it up so that it’s occupying vertical space instead. In doing so, it becomes infinitely harder to create an equally magical experience because engineering and design realities compromise or change how you hear or feel the piano.

Mechanics
In an upright piano, the hammer has to be pulled back to its reset position instead of simply falling with gravity. Because of this extra bounce, it’s easier to miss notes. The tone, of course, is usually locked into this box and backed up against a wall versus being able to fill a room with double-sided speakers the size of a table, kind of like what a grand piano can do. Let’s face it, it’s usually not the same sexy look that a grand can give a home.

Advancements
With space in short supply in most apartments and homes in Europe and Japan, upright instruments have evolved over the decades to really become elegant and incredibly nuanced instruments that make up for their inherent shortcomings with better engineering and perfect execution. The result in 2023 is that there are several upright pianos that are equal to or better to play than similarly priced grand pianos. There’s a sweet spot where upper-mid-tiered German upright pianos cost the same as institutional mid-sized grands, and in many cases, the uprights can deliver a more sophisticated tonal experience. Until the Bechstein A6 came along, their A124 was absolutely right at the top of that list.

Comparison of the A6 to the A124
The German-built A6 upright is a redesign of the A124 model, itself a fresh release from the iconic German maker. It’s part of a wider realignment of Bechstein’s model naming conventions, but those changes have come with major redesigns as well; from hammers to scale design to things like the soundboard taper. The pace of refinement and expansion at Bechstein has been dizzying as if Tesla got into the piano business.

The A124 was what first grabbed me at the NAMM 2016 show in Anaheim when I was first getting acquainted with Bechstein’s modern era of pianos. It was slightly aggressive, without being harsh, had the widest tonal palette of any German upright that I’d played to date, and had one of the most beautifully balanced bass presentations I’d heard.

The A124 played well in NAMM ballrooms, but also in larger showrooms and halls. It was even beefier than Bechstein’s Residence R124, and might very well have been in the running for the most powerful 50-inch German upright piano period. The first time I heard it in a customer’s home it was a little more dominant than I’d have liked, but the new A6 has achieved the best of both worlds.

In a typical home setting the instrument gives the same tonal range and dynamic impression as the A124 gave in larger spaces, but it never becomes so overbearing that you need to underplay or over dampen the room. The low-end response at the forte range of the A124 can now be achieved at the piano or pianissimo range on the A6.

There are substantial scale-design differences that have been undertaken to achieve this. Longer and slightly higher tension bass strings seem to be delivering an even tighter and clearer low end but without any compromise to the warmth and balance. The shape of the taper on the soundboard has also been redone, and so unsurprisingly the bridge placement and its contour has had to be updated.

If you loved the A124, do not look to the A6 to be more of the same with improved branding or cabinets; it’s a very different beast. It is far better suited for a typical home than the A124 ever was. With a clearer low-mid range, and improved response and control in the quieter dynamic ranges, it’s deliberately moved from a more traditional German bell-like upper-mid and treble ranges that you’ll find on similarly priced Schimmels or Sauters, but instead delivers a rich complexity that is far more reminiscent of a Shigeru Kawai SK2 or a Hamburg Steinway M.

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