施坦威钢琴易手，音乐人哀叹

Notes of Sorrow in Changes at Steinway
By JAMES BARRON July 13, 2013
音乐
施坦威钢琴易手，音乐人哀叹
JAMES BARRON 2013年07月13日
First, [要查看本链接请先注册并登录] closed on the sale of its Beaux-Arts Manhattan building on West 57th Street, where the likes of Sergei Rachmaninoff and Vladimir Horowitz once practiced. Three days later, it announced that it was planning to sell the whole company to a private-equity firm that owns more than 15 other medium-size manufacturers, *** everything from windshield wipers to sewing machines to coffins.
施坦威(Steinway & Sons)钢琴公司先是关闭了曼哈顿西57街上那栋学院派建筑风格大厦内的生意，谢尔盖·拉赫玛尼诺夫(Sergei Rachmaninoff)和弗拉基米尔·霍洛维茨(Vladimir Horowitz)等人曾经在那里练过琴。三天后，它又宣布计划将整个公司卖给一家私募公司，该公司拥有15家中等规模的其他产品制造商，从汽车雨刷和缝纫机到棺材，无所不包。
For pianists who obsess about all things Steinway — is a brand-new Steinway as good as one from the 1920s, and are those made in Germany preferable to those made in New York? — the developments had the force of a one-two punch. Pianists cherish memories of the first time they set foot in the building and its famous basement, where generations of professional pianists have chosen the Steinways they played at concerts and recording sessions.
新造的施坦威是否会和20世纪20年代制造的施坦威一样好？在德国制造的施坦威是不是比纽约制造的施坦威要好？——许多钢琴家们就是这样痴迷施坦威的一切，对于他们来说，施坦威的新动向堪称双重打击。钢琴家们珍惜他们第一次走进这栋大厦以及它那著名的地下室的回忆，一代又一代职业钢琴家就是在这个地下室选择在音乐会上和录音中使用的施坦威钢琴。
They also worry that new owners could meddle with Steinway’s time-honored and time-consuming manufacturing methods. Steinway spends almost a year building each grand piano, and pianists fret that an assembly line speedup at the company’s two factories would spoil what they prize: the delicacy of a Steinway’s touch, the colorations of its sound.
他们还担心新主人会插手施坦威历史悠久和耗时的生产方式。施坦威生产一台三角钢琴要花费一年时间，钢琴家们担心在公司的两家工厂里安装高速流水生产线会毁掉他们最珍惜的东西：施坦威钢琴精美的手感与声音中丰富的色彩。
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Bryan Thomas for The New York Times
爱德华·卡拉斯科在施坦威皇后区的工厂工作。施坦威最近出售了它在曼哈顿的大厦，公司即将迎来新主人
“There’s concern any time there’s a shift,” the pianist Gary Graffman said. “There’s no way of my knowing: will they take as much care with each piano as they have in the past?”
“大家担心他们会有所改变，”钢琴家加里·格拉弗曼(Gary Graffman)说，“我无从得知，他们是否会像过去一样关注每一台钢琴呢？”
It is a question that has reverberated through the music world since the $438 million deal for the company was [要查看本链接请先注册并登录] last week. The offer, which came from the [要查看本链接请先注册并登录] firm Kohlberg & Company, would take Steinway private. It has been traded under the stock symbol LVB, for Ludwig van Beethoven, since Steinway went public in 1996.
上个星期，施坦威公司宣布了这笔价值4.38亿美元的交易，自那以后，这个问题就一直在音乐界回响。这笔出价来自私募公司科尔伯格(Kohlberg & Company)，它将收购施坦威公司。交易是以LVB，即路德维格·冯·贝多芬(Ludwig van Beethoven)的缩写这个股票代码进行的，施坦威自1996年上市以来一直使用这个代码。
Steinway is now 13 days into a 45-day “go-shop” period, during which it can consider other bids, and at least one portfolio manager whose firm has a stake in Steinway has said the price is too low. Shares of Steinway closed at $36.18 on Friday, $1.18 above Kohlberg’s $35-a-share offer.
施坦威拥有45天的“竞购期”，在这期间，它可以考虑其他出价，同时需要至少一位其公司拥有施坦威股份的证券投资经纪人声称科尔伯格公司的价格过低，今天已到了第13天。周五施坦威股票的收盘价是36.18美元，比科尔伯格提供的35美元一股高出1.18美元。
Kohlberg is “not contemplating any changes to any of the manufacturing operations,” said a Kohlberg investment partner, Christopher W. Anderson, adding that there had been no discussion of closing or moving the factories in Astoria, Queens, and Hamburg, Germany. He would not comment on whether Steinway’s top management would remain after the takeover. (Kohlberg’s chairman, James A. Kohlberg, has been a director of The New York Times Company since 2008.)
科尔伯格公司目前“并不考虑对制造工序做出任何改变”，公司投资伙伴克里斯托弗·W·安德森(Christopher W. Anderson)补充说，公司没有讨论过关闭或迁移施坦威公司位于皇后区阿斯托利亚和德国汉堡的两处工厂。对于收购后施坦威公司高层的去留，他表示无可奉告（科尔伯格的总裁詹姆斯·A·科尔伯格[James A. Kohlberg]自2008年开始成为《纽约时报》集团的董事之一）。
Beyond the balance sheet, Mr. Anderson, 38, has an interest in the company’s products. “I grew up playing on a Steinway,” he said in an interview this week: an upright that once belonged to his great-grandmother. And on Friday, he posted a letter online to Steinway’s dealers in which he said one of Kohlberg’s “main goals for Steinway” was to “preserve and support everything that makes a Steinway piano special.” He also said that by going private, Steinway would be “free from the short-term financial constraints of publicly-traded companies” and would have more latitude to “plan and invest with a long-term perspective.”
除了账目明细，38岁的安德森先生对施坦威公司的产品也非常感兴趣。“我是弹着施坦威钢琴长大的，”本周他在接受采访时说——那是一台从太祖母那里继承下来的立式钢琴。星期五，他在网上发布了一封致施坦威经销商的公开信，声称科尔伯格公司“对施坦威公司的主要意图”是“维护并支持令施坦威如此特殊的一切东西”。他还说，施坦威公司的股份由私人持有之后，便可以“避免上市公司面临的短期经济限制”，可以“计划和投资长期目标”。
The deal would give Steinway its fifth set of owners. In 1972, the Steinway family — descendants of the immigrant instrument maker who started the company in 1853 — sold it to CBS. That marriage eventually soured, and in the 1980s, Steinway was sold to an investment group from Boston. Steinway changed hands again in the 1990s, when it was bought by what was then Selmer Industries, a band-instrument manufacturer with plants in the Midwest and South. The combined company was led by two investment bankers who had controlled Selmer, Kyle R. Kirkland and Dana D. Messina.
这项交易令施坦威公司迎来了它的第五期主人。1853年，乐器生产者施坦威家族创立了这个公司，1972年，他们移民美国的后裔将公司卖给了CBS。这项合作很快破裂，20世纪80年代，施坦威被卖给波士顿的一个投资公司，于90年代再度易手，被卖给当时名为塞尔玛工业(Selmer Industries)的乐队乐器生产公司，它在中西部和南部拥有工厂。新的联合公司由塞尔玛的所有者，投资银行家凯尔·R·科克兰德(Kyle R. Kirkland)和戴纳·D·麦西纳(Dana D. Messina)所有。
Mr. Messina served as chief executive until 2011, stepping down after he and John M. Stoner Jr., the president of the band-instrument division, made a bid to buy everything but the company’s piano operations. Steinway began a review of strategic alternatives that ended last December, when it turned down the Stoner-Messina offer and said the company was not for sale. Then came the overture from Kohlberg.
直至2011年，麦西纳先生担任公司首席执行官。与公司乐队乐器部门负责人小约翰·M·斯通(John M. Stoner Jr.)出价收购公司除钢琴部门之外的所有部门后，他从施坦威公司辞职。去年12月，施坦威公司拒绝了斯通-麦西纳的出价，声称公司拒绝出售，并开始研究战略替代者。之后便迎来了科尔伯格的提议。
Under Mr. Messina’s replacement — Michael T. Sweeney, a former president of Starbucks in Britain who is chairman of the holding company for The Minneapolis Star-Tribune — Steinway’s financial picture brightened. The company posted a profit of $2.7 million in the first quarter of 2013, up from $590,000 in the first quarter of 2012. Piano sales rose 2.9 percent worldwide.
接替麦西纳职位的是英国星巴克的前总裁迈克尔·T·斯维尼(Michael T. Sweeney)，如今担任《明尼阿波利斯星论坛报》(The Minneapolis Star-Tribune)控股公司董事长。在他领导下，施坦威的经济前景一片光明。公司公布的2013年第一季度盈利为270万美元，比起2012年同期的59万美元大大增加。全球钢琴销售额增长了2.9%。
To keep pace with orders in Europe and Asia, Steinway has increased its work force by almost 20 percent in the last year at the Hamburg plant, and Mr. Sweeney said that leaving either New York or Hamburg “would be pushing the self-destruct button for an investor.”
为了满足欧洲与亚洲的订单，施坦威公司去年在汉堡的工厂增加了约20%的工人，斯维尼说，假如投资者将工厂搬离纽约或汉堡，“等于按下了自杀键”。
He said the building on 57th Street was another matter. He called it old and forbidding — it opened in 1925 down the block and across the street from Carnegie Hall — and a financial burden. Steinway is shopping for space in Manhattan, convenient to Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center, and Mr. Sweeney said he wanted a showroom where the pianos would look like “sculptural objects,” along with a recital hall and practice rooms.
他说，出售57街的建筑是另一回事。那栋建筑位于卡耐基音乐厅对面，落成于1925年，他说那里已经是古旧的危房，而且是财政上的负担。施坦威目前正在曼哈顿购买店面，方便将乐器运往卡耐基音乐厅和林肯中心，斯维尼说他希望新店里有一个展示厅，可以把钢琴像“雕塑”一样陈列，同时还要有一个独奏厅和若干练琴室。
Steinway must vacate the 57th Street space by the end of next year, and many pianists are sorry it is leaving. “I’m sure I’m with everybody else on this, that it’s a shame that building will no longer be Steinway Hall,” the pianist Emanuel Ax said. “One of the two times that I met Horowitz for five seconds was when they did a celebration in that building after his 1965 return” to performing, at Carnegie Hall. “That was very, very meaningful.”
施坦威必须于明年年底搬出57街的建筑，许多钢琴家都对此感到难过。“我敢肯定其他人的感受和我一样，那栋建筑不再属于施坦威，真让人难堪，”钢琴家艾曼纽·阿克斯(Emanuel Ax)说。“我曾在那里见到过霍洛维茨两次，其中一次只有五秒钟，是1965年他重返乐坛时他们在那里举行庆祝会，”那场演出是在卡耐基音乐厅。“那对我来说太有意义了。”