Bösendorfer

The Viennese sound. Extended bass strings and a singing tone unlike any other maker.

About Bösendorfer.

Bösendorfer has built pianos in Austria since 1828. Hand-built at the Wiener Neustadt factory, fewer than 250 instruments leave the works each year, every one regulated and voiced over weeks.

The defining feature is the extended keyboard: Bösendorfer concert grands include extra bass strings below the standard 88-note range, which resonate sympathetically and give the lower register an unmistakable Viennese bloom.

The Imperial Model 290, with its full 97-note keyboard, has been the choice of pianists from Bartok to Oscar Peterson.

Bösendorfer models.

Grand pianos

Imperial 290 (Concert)
Model 280VC
Model 230VC
Model 225
Model 214VC
Model 200
Model 185
Model 170

Upright pianos

Model 130130cm
Model 120120cm

The Bösendorfer history.

Bösendorfer has built pianos in Vienna since 1828, when Ignaz Bösendorfer opened his workshop in the heart of the Austrian capital.

1828

A Viennese workshop.

Ignaz Bösendorfer founded the company in Vienna, a city that was then the undisputed centre of the musical world. From the outset he set out to build instruments of exceptional refinement, and within two years had been granted an Imperial Warrant as official piano maker to the Habsburg court.

1830

The Liszt endorsement.

Franz Liszt, whose ferocious playing reduced lesser instruments to ruins, found in the Bösendorfer a piano that could survive him. His public approval transformed the young firm’s reputation overnight and cemented its place among the great makers of Europe.

1859

Ludwig takes the helm.

Ignaz’s son Ludwig Bösendorfer succeeded his father, expanding production and opening the celebrated Bösendorfer-Saal, a Viennese concert hall that became one of the finest recital rooms in the city until its demolition in 1913.

1900

The Imperial.

Bösendorfer introduced the Imperial Model 290, a concert grand with a full 97-note keyboard extending down to a sub-contra C. The extra bass strings resonate sympathetically across the whole instrument, giving the Imperial its unmistakable depth and bloom.

1973

A century and a half.

Through two world wars and the upheavals of the twentieth century, Bösendorfer continued to build entirely by hand in Austria, producing only a few hundred instruments each year for the world’s most discerning pianists.

Today

Still hand-built in Austria.

Every Bösendorfer is still hand-built at the Wiener Neustadt factory, each one regulated and voiced over weeks. The Viennese tone, prized by pianists from Bartók to Oscar Peterson, remains as distinctive as ever.

Bösendorfer in the catalogue.

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