RALPH VAUGHAN WILLIAMS’S GRAND PIANO

Steinway model O, 1920, no 199661

RALPH VAUGHAN WILLIAMS’S GRAND PIANO

Speyer Steinway Piano

Ralph Vaughan Williams’s Grand Piano Steinway model O, 1920, no 199661Ralph Vaughan Williams’s Grand Piano Steinway model O, 1920, no 199661
Ralph Vaughan Williams’s Grand Piano Steinway model O, 1920, no 199661, lid openRalph Vaughan Williams’s Grand Piano Steinway model O, 1920, no 199661, lid open
Ralph Vaughan Williams’s Grand Piano Steinway model O, 1920, no 199661, detail of soundboardRalph Vaughan Williams’s Grand Piano Steinway model O, 1920, no 199661, detail of soundboard
Ralph Vaughan Williams’s Grand Piano Steinway model O, 1920, no 199661, detail of soundboardRalph Vaughan Williams’s Grand Piano Steinway model O, 1920, no 199661, detail of soundboard

Overview

This Steinway piano, the ‘Lounge Model’, was certainly chosen by Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872–1958), but was bought by his second wife Ursula Vaughan Williams (1911–2007) on Christmas Eve 1953, surely a Christmas present. Though friends since they met in 1938, they had married in February of the same year, his first wife Adeline having died in May 1951.

In September they had moved from Dorking into a glamorous new residence, 10 Hanover Terrace, Regent’s Park, where he spent the rest of his life. While in his study he had always had a Broadwood upright piano (now at Leith Hill Place), the Steinway piano stood in the drawing room, where it appears in an undated photograph with the composer and Leopold Stokowski working at it.