November 30, 2007 12:51 am

Cut and paste version of story Photos Andover: Andi Zhou, 16, of Andover, left, Director of Performance Christopher Walter, and Sophie Scolnik,17, of Andover, rehearses a piece composed for three people to play specially for todays free concert to christen Phillips Academy's new Steinway Grand Concert Piano at Cochran Chapel at 7 p.m. Thursday, November 29, 2007 Roger Darrigrand/Eagle-Tribune

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Players' piano: Six hands will christen new concert Steinway

Two students and an instructor will play music written specially for the $100,000 piano by a composer-in-residence | a complicated piece that requires three people to work the keys at the same time.

By Crystal Bozek
CNHI News Service

ANDOVER, Mass. — Six hands at once.
That's how Phillips Academy students will christen their new Steinway concert grand piano in a free performance at Cochran Chapel .
Two students and an instructor will play music written specially for the $100,000 piano by a composer-in-residence | a complicated piece that requires three people to work the keys at the same time.
"Three people playing is rather unusual," music instructor Christopher Walter said. "Oh, it's rare."
They received the music last week, but they're confident they will have it together. As one of the students put it, how can you not sound great on a Steinway?
"I love it," Andover senior Sophie Scolnik-Brower, 17, said. "It's so nice. It makes anything you play sound really good."
New York resident Leo Ullman, a member of the class of 1957, donated the Steinway to the school in honor of his parents on the 50th anniversary of his graduation.
He will be there friday night to see the piano's first official concert performance.
"His parents instilled such a love of music in him," said school spokeswoman Sally Holm. "This was a way for him to pay them back."
Phillips Academy has an older Steinway used for the last 100 years in Cochran. With the new piano's arrival, the older instrument has been relegated to the music building.
The Steinway, individually handcrafted so each is one-of-a-kind, is considered by some to be the world's foremost piano, the instrument of choice of 98 percent of concert pianists. Walter picked out the piano at the company's New York factory.
"This is as fine a piano as you can find," Walter said. "It is a very special instrument. ... Hopefully, this one will last us another century or so."
Walter, Scolnik-Brower and Andi Zhou, 16, a junior, will perform the six-hand piece, "On Spaces," composed by James Matheson.
The four-and-a-half-minute piece is full of dramatic pauses that reverberate throughout the high-ceilinged chapel. Their shoulders side by side, the pianists' 30 fingers moved left to right, sometimes on top of one another.
"He calls it 'On Spaces.' There are a lot of long pauses and space in the chapel. We as performers have very little space at the piano," Walter said. "It's a pun really."
In all, the performance should run an hour and a half long, with works by Chopin, Brahms and others. Students Jennifer Chew, a sophomore, and Qing Yi Yu, a junior, also will perform.
"It's a beautiful thing," Walter said of the piano, before covering it for the night.

Crystal Bozek writes for The Eagle-Tribune of North Andover, Mass.