Peter Kutt and the Art of Restoring Classics

Often when talking about musicians in the area I have heard mention of the name Peter Kutt. The agreed upon rumors seemed to indicate he’s an exceptional classical pianist who does some work rebuilding pianos, but that he was also elusive with his talents. Out of curiosity, mostly as a musician myself, I decided to track him down for an interview to find out the whole story for myself. When I first reached him, he was busy with wrapping up some odd jobs this summer. Once he found a bit of free time he was kind enough to grant my request to interview him about his relationship with pianos. I was invited over to see what he was working on currently.

My first impression driving into his yard was that both it and the house were cared for and neat, but in no way flashy or fancy. He asked me to join him on the porch and without much prompting began to quietly relate to me how his relationship with music has grown and changed over time.

“Do you want to know how I got started?” he asked.
“Sure,” I said, “how did you begin?”

“Dad played stand up bass, accordion, guitar, and piano by ear. I remember being 4 or 5 and sitting on Dad’s knee learning to plunk out tunes on the piano. We had Becker Brothers ‘Old Brick’ piano. It was a gigantic old upright with pillars for legs. My parents got it for free or cheap and Mom thought the black color was too ugly and that it should be red. So she painted it fire engine red. But she ran out of paint and used fake brick ‘stick-um’ vinyl on the music desk and fall board. People thought it was actually built of brick when they saw it.


“Since it was an old piano, it often needed repair. Dad would go to the piano store for parts and I was fascinated by all the broken parts, shady characters, and loose keys strewn about the place. As a child, my interest was peaked by these fellows who spent all day working with all these parts. There are over 3,000 parts in a piano such as bushings and rods. Piecing them together is an art. For instance, in older pianos they used a coating of sheep fat on the bushings to make the action smoother, but since the rods were made out of silver this created verdigris oxidation. This is just one of the obstacles you encounter refurbishing older pianos. You can tell the quality of workmanship on a rebuild right off. It’s like being a sculptor; it takes years and years to understand how the action should work and to recreate that on each individual piano.

“When I was in high school we moved to Hartford, Connecticut where I started taking piano lessons from Yuko Yamaguchi a Fulbright Scholar and recent graduate from Julliard School of Music. She was light to me musically. In her studio she had a 1920 Steinway piano rebuilt by Eddie Dapillo that was ‘like new.’

“So, in high school I began working for Dapillo’s Baldwin dealership where half the store was full of gutted pianos. I was just playing piano for Dapillo’s customer, but I really wanted to learn how to rebuild them. I watched what they did, but it was kind of like Greek to my teenage mind. However, over time I learned the tools and how to restring and level keys. That was all they trusted me to do though.

“Then one summer at Tanglewood when I was eighteen I came across a Concert Steinway Grand sitting in a breezeway and, being a cocky young pianist, I sat down and started playing Brahms. A woman who happened by to listen ended up offering me a piano if I would come get it in Boston. It was a seven foot 1869 Steinway Grand with 85 keys. I saw it and insisted on giving her something and finally she took $200 for it. We loaded it onto my brother’s dump pick-up truck and that started my ‘piano moving days.’ We made it into the yard at the house with a flat tire and a piano that needed a total rebuild.

“I started by cutting off all the strings and mailed them to Mapes in Tennessee which was the only place I knew that could recreate bass strings for that model. Then I went back to Dapillo’s shop and got some advice on the project as well as a book ‘The Guide to Restringing’ by John Travis.


“The 120 year old action was obsolete and I couldn’t buy parts, so I sent off to John Ford who specializes in reconstructing old instruments and he built a new action for it. In 1973 it cost $1,105 for the brand new action built specifically for the piano. I then spent my time re-plating the pedals, putting in new dampers, and trying to make everything work. It took two years and then I had a beautiful instrument.

“When Dapillo had a heart attack at 54 and I lost my employment there I concentrated on finishing my music degree and “fooling jurors” that I could play at the Hart School of Music. But, by the time I graduated I was disillusioned by the stress and life of musicians in the classical world and decided to seek a more decent and humane living.

“For a period of time I worked at an Ethnic Market for $2.10/hour. I loved meeting people from all over the world and, most importantly, no one cared about the piano.”

“Did you move the piano you rebuilt to Tryon? How did you end up here?” I asked.

“My wife went back to school for cello while I was working, and then we moved to Tryon. In the end we sold the piano, along with just about everything else except my wife’s cello and my flute before moving to Tryon. We had come here to visit one summer and were impressed by the climate. When we first arrived it felt like we’d entered a vacuum it was so quiet with no street noise.

“After settling into the area, my wife and I began performing as the Cresta Azul Chamber Players because of the thirst for classical music in this area. We were joined by violinists, violists, and occasionally singers or saxophonists and others to do lots of chamber music recitals.

“We divorced in 1984 and I haven’t done much since then. You have to devote a lot of your time and life force to music, and I didn’t want to do that anymore. When you’re in tune with yourself and the music, everything is in harmony. But as I grew, the music no longer held the same significance for me. I turned to internal study of the mind and peace. I practiced yoga for 18 years in a row without missing a day. I channeled the energy I had been pouring out through music inward with yoga and I became a broader person. I realized I didn’t have the constitution for the life of being a performance classical pianist. Those that are able to do it are very rare and are both constitutionally and physically very strong. I just was not built that way, but the craft of rebuilding pianos does not have the same stress. Rebuilding is also much quieter. When I do play now, I use ear plugs because my ears are just too sensitive.

“Right now I’m working on a full size upright 1891 Steinway. A music student from the University of Cincinnati had it for over 50 years and had too much feeling for the instrument to sell it, so it was given to me. Its exterior is beautiful black ebony that I’m refurbishing. With a piano this old there are plenty of dings and bumps to smooth out. I also had to find a music desk in a shop to replace the one that was missing. I’m working on leveling and regulating the keys. Regulating is the tricky process of making all the keys feel the same when they are played. The best regulators can simply name their price for a project. What makes it particularly difficult is that the relationship between keys is different for each instrument and each key has a certain optimum compression.


“I also have a 1920s Gulbransen Petite Baby Grand that I’m working on restringing, replacing the hammers, and regulating for a local woman here in town. Over the years I have rebuilt several vintage Steinway Grands and Mason & Hamlin Grands. I’ve also worked on three Baldwin 9 foot Concert Grands that have tremendous sound. I usually work on two pianos a year at this point.”

He then began to share with me the Steinway and Gulbransen that were in the process of being rebuilt. They were lovely instruments and it finally gave me the chance to hear him play. There was none of that “cockiness” of the young pianist he had described, but simply the deft hand of a master floating through a few pieces. The Samuel Barber pieces were particularly lovely.