Les Pianos Pleyel: the oldest piano factory in Europe
Quatre Couleurs would like to thank the Maison Pleyel and its manager, Anne-Emmanuelle Khan, for taking part in the opening of the Itinérance exhibition, featuring works by Bruno Moinard!
Pleyel is a history that looks to the future, the formidable epic of a dynasty of entrepreneurs who are passionate about instrument making, music and artists.
Founded in 1807, Pleyel is the oldest surviving piano maker in the world.
Inventive and avant-garde, the House of Pleyel has always benefited from the knowledge and expertise of skilled engineers, musicians and the best experts in instrument making, who have been at the origin of high-performance technical advances, enshrined in numerous patents and awarded gold medals on several occasions at the Universal Exhibition in Paris and London.
Numerous young talents were discovered by the House of Pleyel and performed in the Pleyel salons to become illustrious ambassadors, thus discovering the pleasure of playing on these exceptional instruments and revealing the inimitable colour of their sound, the timbre so characteristic of the greatest French pianos: scintillating high notes, ample and deep basses with a colourful mid-range allowing the best artists to express themselves through a style of playing that is full of nuance, lightness and roundness with great finesse of touch.
All of these romantic colour features embody the "French sound" that is the hallmark of Pleyel pianos. Frédéric Chopin was one of the first passionate promoters of the brand, when he exclaimed: "When I'm feeling lively and strong enough to find my own sound, I need a Pleyel piano!" Let us not forget Claude Debussy, Camille Saint-Saëns, Arthur Rubinstein, Arthur Honegger, Nikolaï. Rimsky-Korsakov, Sergei Rachmaninov, Wanda Landowska, Igor Stravinsky, and Alfred Cortot were also passionate lovers of Pleyel pianos!
With 210 years of expertise in instrument making and design, Pleyel has manufactured nearly 270,000 pianos, built the famous Salle Pleyel and has become synonymous with French excellence. Today, Pleyel pianos have developed a collection of exceptional pianos signed by designers (Andrée Putman, Hilton McConnico, Michele de Lucchi, Peugeot Design Lab), visual artists (Marco Del Re, Aki Kuroda, Marteen Baas) and interior decorators (Alberto Pinto, Jacques-Emile Ruhlmann), asking them to reinvent the piano with their own vocabulary, using today's codes. Pleyel pianos are now produced in limited series or as one-offs for special orders.
A piano is 5,000 assembled parts requiring the expertise of more than twenty different trades, a rare know-how passed down from generation to generation, and a minimum of 9 months of manufacturing. The House of Pleyel's ambition is to dust off the image of the piano as a modern instrument by transforming it into an exceptional work of art, an object of the art of living, imbued with refinement and a certain idea of French excellence, so that it becomes a luxury object that is part of our living cultural heritage.
