NCMA: How the Sturgeons donated a Steinway to Nelson
A grand gesture that keeps on giving.
Murray and Jocelyn Sturgeon at the Steinway factory in Hamburg, Germany, where they travelled to select a new concert grand piano for Nelson.
Murray and Jocelyn Sturgeon were watching pianist Piers Lane when a key fell off the Steinway he was playing at the then Nelson School of Music.
Without missing a beat, the Australian classical pianist kept playing, bent down and picked up the wayward key.
Afterwards, Murray got chatting to Piers. "I told him he was not just a fine musician and pianist, he was a contortionist as well," Murray laughs.
As regular concert attendees at the school of music, Jocelyn and Murray were there again another night when Murray got talking to singer Tim Beveridge and his pianist, and asked how the Steinway had performed.
The pianist said it was tired. Curious, Murray asked how much a new Steinway cost.
"He told me it would be in the order of $280,000 to $300,000," Murray says. "And I replied that was not a huge amount of money split over the life of a piano."
Unbeknown to Murray, the then School of Music manager, Frances McElhinney, overheard that conversation, and "presented herself in my office the following day."
Frances talked about the fundraising project already underway to buy a new Steinway, and asked Murray if she had heard him say he wanted to buy the piano.
"I said, 'no, Frances, you didn't hear me say that at all,'" Murray laughs.
"But I came home that night and told Jocelyn that Frances had visited and suggested I might like to present a piano to the school of music, to which Jocelyn – who loved music, violin and the piano – said, 'well, why don't you?'"
"And I said: 'Come on, why don't you?'"
They kept discussing it, until it became "Well, why don't WE?" — deciding it would be a "worthy contribution" to both the school of music and the region.
“Well, why don't WE?”
Murray then took over the Steinway replacement project himself, drawing on contacts in the music world (Tim Beveridge) to find a Steinway agent selling pianos from Hamburg, Germany.
"I wanted to purchase the piano myself, not just give the money to the committee," he explains.
Murray arranged for Piers Lane to help select the piano, and Piers organised a selection date at the Steinway factory in Hamburg. Murray and Jocelyn were in Japan when Piers rang; they flew straight to Hamburg.
The next day, after a tour of the factory, Piers selected three pianos from the 33 in the showroom.
"We had a fantastic tour of the factory," Murray says, "and when we joined Piers, he asked us to select the piano from the instruments he had picked. He had closed the lids on all bar three of the pianos."
Piers played Rachmaninoff and The Four Seasons on each. "Then he turned and said, 'Well, which one, Murray?'"
"I told him my ear was tuned to country music," Murray says, "And so Jocelyn got to choose after playing the three pianos."
She chose Piano C – which was also Piers's pick.
"He said: 'When I played A, I'd play that in the royal concert hall’,” Murray says, “And B was my pick for the Vienna opera house, but C has been voiced for the wooden building of the Nelson School of Music.'"
No two pianos sound identical, Murray says, because they're “all voiced by hand."
Murray can't put a monetary value on the experience of choosing the piano with Jocelyn at the factory.
“People ask – why do you give? The more you give the more you receive. Not in cash, but in pleasure.”