4th Annual International Stretto Piano Festival at Peter Norton Symphony Space’s Leonard Nimoy Thalia

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2. 4th Annual International Stretto Piano Festival

New York, NY (April 2024) — Stretto Piano Concerts will host its annual International Stretto Piano Festival, from May 25 - June 4, 2024, with multi-genre concerts at Peter Norton Symphony Space’s Leonard Nimoy Thalia. The festival celebrates the stretto piano, which has narrower-than-conventional keys and makes piano playing more equitable for those with smaller hands, notably children and female performers. With a Stretto piano, small hands can do what big hands do. Now in its fourth year, the festival and concert series are the only performance platforms in the world that offer a choice of piano key size to international performers. In 2023-2024, four piano manufacturers — Hailun & Pearl River, China; Steingraeber, Germany; Klavins Piano, Latvia — began to offer Stretto pianos on custom order, influenced by this global movement.

The concerts will feature distinguished pianists such as Thomas Weaver, Donna Weng Friedman, Jed Distler, Steve Sandberg, Maryam Raya, Thomas Osuga, Hannah Reimann, plus violinist Zach Brock. Programs will include solo piano works, chamber groups, and various genres, from Rachmaninoff to Joni Mitchell — plus a night of music by internationally renowned composer, David Amram. The full line-up of artists and program information can be found below. Please watch our official sizzle reel below:

In addition to free online concerts on Youtube, the Stretto International Stretto Festival is partnering with over ten global organizations and universities to host in-person concerts from stages and studios around the globe — including San Diego State University in California, SMU’s Meadows School of the Arts and Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing and Visual Arts in Texas, Salem College in North Carolina, the State University of Music and Performing Arts in Stuttgart, Germany, the Klavins Piano Concert Hall in Kuldiga, Latvia, and the Steingraeber & Sohne Studio in Bayreuth, Germany. Public concerts will also be held in Victoria, Canada; Melbourne, Australia; Auckland, New Zealand; and London, UK.

Audiences will be invited to try the Stretto pianos after every event so they can feel and hear for themselves how groundbreaking the narrow piano keys are. This alternative size allows for more ease and comfort when playing, and Stretto’s in-person events are the closest thing to showrooms that we have at this early stage of their commercial offering.

Since the standardization of the piano in the late 19th century, pianists with smaller hands — predominantly women — have found this conventional size challenging to play, and have even experienced playing-related injuries. Today, artists have realized that one size does not fit all and are using the narrow key to reach their true musical potential. This unique festival shines a light on this growing, international community of artists who play and/or own Stretto pianos. Our 2023 festival garnered over 10,000 views and the concerts are available to watch here.

The International Stretto Piano Festival is the brainchild of New York multi-genre pianist and singer, Hannah Reimann, 20th century ‘Stretto’ pioneer who independently rebuilt her Steinway in 1997 with narrow keys to accommodate her hand size. She was featured on the front page of the Wall Street Journal as a “musician on a mission to make the world safe for small pianists.”

The festival has quickly become a unique global performance phenomenon due to the collaboration of fellow pioneers and stretto experts, Carol Leone, classical virtuoso and Professor of Piano at SMU in Dallas, Pianists for Alternately Sized Keyboards (PASK) coordinator, Australian Rhonda Boyle, and Ulrike Wohlwender at the HMDK in Stuttgart, Germany.

World-renowned pianist Roland Pontinen, who participated in the 2022 festival, reflected on Hannah Reimann’s Stretto piano when he said: “I tried this piano in 1998 and used the Schumann Toccata as my first test piece. This is a particularly taxing piece for normal-sized hands and I was amazed!”

To arrange for press tickets for rehearsals or performances for any concert; to request high-resolution images for print; or to arrange an interview with Ms. Reimann or Ms. Boyle, contact info.strettopianofestival@gmail.com.

Please consider donating to Stretto Piano Concerts to help make piano playing more equitable.