Steinway Grand Hand-Crafted in Public, March 16-27

If you drop by Steinway Hall in Long Island City over the next few weeks, you can watch a master craftsman at work. Steinway & Sons have moved the workshop of casemaker Sante Auriti to a space visible through the front window of the Hall, where he will work on a new Steinway Louis XV grand piano (Model 501A) during business hours, fitting its braces, case moldings, and legs, and rough-carving the bottom edge of the rim. That may seem like a lot of time for these few details, but the whole thing takes over a year to complete; that's why the 501A costs about a hundred thousand dollars.