The man rebuilding the golden age of pianos
March 21, 2022
City lawyer Muzaffar Shah turned his childhood passion into a ‘secret’ business. With his new showroom, he’s becoming a person of note
When Muzaffar Shah was a small boy growing up in Surrey, he had a plaything that he loved above all others. “It was a toy grand piano,” he remembers. “I was fascinated by the sound it made, trying different notes and working out how to make music. I asked my parents for lessons by the time I was four.”
These days Shah, 38, has as much enthusiasm for the real thing as he did for his childhood toy. Over the past decade he has been building Britain’s only company trading exclusively in grand pianos, with a focus on lovingly rebuilt examples from two renowned brands: the historic French house of Pleyel, and the American maker Steinway & Sons. On World Piano Day, 29 March, he opens his first shop, an elegant gallery-like space in London’s Fitzrovia.
Shah’s business, Grand Passion Pianos, grew out of a search for his own instrument when he was in his late 20s. By then a City lawyer, he had never lost his childhood love of playing, despite having had to put an end to his ambitions to become a professional pianist. “I had done all my grades by about 14, and then at 17 I had to make a decision about whether to go to a conservatoire or study something academic,” he says. “But I had this issue with my little fingers collapsing under pressure, which is a problem when you’re playing octaves. No doctor could be certain what caused it.”
His adult quest to find his dream piano revived his interest in what distinguishes one instrument from another, from major factors such as age and size down to details like the type of veneer used on the case, or the beauty of a logo. “A Pleyel grand built in 1904 turned out to be the best piano I could find,” he says, referring to the brand favoured by Chopin. The only issue was moving it into his top-floor flat in east London. “Fortunately we managed to get it in the lift on its keyboard end – which was my first experience of piano logistics.”
All this led Shah to start dealing in three or four pianos a year alongside his day job. He decided to focus on Pleyel and Steinway grands because of their quality and high status among musicians, and worked out that by completely rebuilding models from the golden age of piano-making – a period he defines as roughly between 1895 and the late 1930s – he could create “a sweet spot” for his growing business. (Shah is clear to point out the difference between the rebuilt instruments he sells, where many of the elements, including strings and moving parts, are replaced, and restored pianos where as much of the original instrument as possible is retained.)
The rebuilding work is carried out by a specialist team of craftsmen and technicians, and each instrument can take up to a year to complete. This puts the pace of his business in stark contrast to that of his partner, Neill Strain, a successful florist with a Belgravia shop and a concession at Harrods; as Shah points out, “Pianos are the complete opposite of perishable goods.” Prices for his pianos start at about £14,000 for a baby grand – from around 5ft in length – rising to more than £80,000 for the rarest or largest examples: a Steinway concert grand can be nearly 9ft long. He sources unrestored instruments by scouring auctions and private sales, the past few coming from Switzerland, Guernsey and France. “The most recent one is a rosewood Pleyel made in 1911, which I bought directly from the apartment of a woman in Paris.” His customers come from far and wide as well: he recently sold a Steinway to a man in New Zealand.
To explain his rebuilding process, Shah turns to the Steinway Model O that currently occupies a corner of his Kensington sitting room. Originally made in 1923, this 5ft 10¾in grand has been completely rebuilt, with new keys to replace the original ivory ones, new strings and mechanical action. The cast-iron frame has been resprayed and the original mahogany veneer replaced with a high-gloss black finish. Its appearance is strikingly elegant, but it’s the meticulous attention to the internal workings that gives the piano its ravishing sound. Even now there is more to do. “It’s very green,” says Shah. “There are 12,000 moving parts in this piano and now there will be five full days of minute adjustments to get the touch and tone exactly right.” He is very serious when he talks about pianos, so it’s something of a surprise when he has fun playing a rendition of Whitney Houston’s “Run to You” to demonstrate the Steinway’s rich tone.
This piano will eventually be for sale at about £29,000. The prices of Shah’s rebuilt pianos can be half that of their new equivalents, which in theory are perfect in every way. “But I don’t want a piano that there’s nothing wrong with,” he says. “I want a piano that there’s everything right with – which means it has to have personality; it has to have colour.” Although he is fully independent of Steinway & Sons, he says he takes a respectful, conservative approach to rebuilding the company’s pianos. With Pleyel, he considers that a long tradition of innovation allows him to be more creative, “optimising” the piano with the application of new technology. A key feature is the use of hybrid stringing, in which modern wires combining different metal alloys are fitted to enhance the richness of the sound. Purists might baulk at such innovations, but Shah’s customers come with a broad range of attitudes.
“I’ve sold pianos to people who can’t play,” he says, explaining that for these buyers there’s an option to have any piano fitted with a digital mechanism that allows the instrument to play by itself. “I have no qualms about that. You can programme any piece you want from your iPad and your piano will play it. You can have a concerto with the orchestral part created digitally, or a pop track with Adele singing and your piano accompanying her.”
He plans to hold events in his new London shop, which is close to the showrooms of several major piano brands and just around the corner from Wigmore Hall concert venue. He’s excited to have this public face, after years of being what he calls “a piano-world secret”, selling instruments direct from his Wandsworth workshop. The freshly completed white, grey and gold interior will be a showcase for between six and eight pianos at a time, as well as his collection of books. He has also recently acquired a chapel in south London that was built in 1848, planning to hold a concert there featuring a Pleyel grand from 1848 that he is currently restoring (Chopin on the programme, obviously).
Oddly, perhaps, Shah currently has no permanent grand piano of his own. He often takes one home to be “played in”, but his original, much-loved Pleyel went missing some years ago on its way to be rebuilt. “I wrote to every dealer in the country with the serial number and a picture, asking them to look out for it, but it has never been recovered.” With this mystery still unsolved, he remains on the hunt for his forever piano.
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