Review of Note by Note: The Making of Steinway L1037

The best documentaries are so well crafted that a viewer - even one that is unfamiliar or uninterested in the topic at hand - is drawn into its world.

Regrettably Note by Note: The Making of Steinway L1037 is not one of the best. The film ostensibly follows the creation of a Steinway piano. The Steinway company is unique in that it employs a variety of skilled builders to create their largely handcrafted grand piano instruments. This creative process is easily to star of the film. It is a fascinating world of classically trained every-men; cigarette smoking oddballs that bring an artisan's touch to the finite details of each piano they craft. The amount of time and skill that goes into each instrument is astounding and endlessly impressive.

Where the movie falters is when it steps off the assembly line floor. While it is strangely transfixing to watch a tattooed tuner play beautiful music on the piano he's helping to build the movie goes a bit far with its love affair of the Steinway. It is an instrument that best speaks for itself, and the soundtrack - made entirely of pieces played on the Steinway by professional musicians like Harry Connick Jr - is phenomenal. However, I could have done without the repeated bouts of effusive praise laid upon the instrument by a bunch of talking heads. Listening to Connick Jr.'s music is fascinating, listening to him ramble on about his music is not. These interludes create a more disjointed narrative and, as the film goes on, it is hard to keep track of where exactly we are in the process of creating a Steinway.

There are moments when the stories of the pianists and their Steinways are as interesting as the creation of the Steinway itself (I particularly enjoyed the stories of the teen whose playing reminded his grandfather of his skill and the saga of the picky Pierre-Laurent Aimard searching for the perfect piano) but those moments are regrettably few.

Still, it is a mostly fascinating look into a world of skilled handiwork that is dangerously close to becoming extinct that really gives the viewer a good idea of how much soul goes into (and consequently comes out of) a Steinway.

7/10