Renowned for their warm and mellow tone, award-winning Cavendish Pianos are lovingly built by a highly skilled team of master craftspeople who, as John Evans discovers, create sustainable instruments with heart and soul
In the Yorkshire Dales National Park, a family business is now the only firm continuing the tradition of British piano making. Offering an entirely personal service, Cavendish Pianos work directly with every customer to provide the very best piano for each individual.
New models in the Cavendish family![New models in the Cavendish family]()
Yorkshire: a region rich in tradition, craftsmanship and natural beauty. Those qualities come together at Cavendish, in instruments such as the Wharfedale 132, the maker’s flagship upright piano, launched in 2023. Inspired by its success and, once again, in tribute to Yorkshire’s timeless dales, Cavendish is proud to launch two new instruments, the Swaledale 126 (pictured) and Silverdale 112.
Built to the same exacting standards as the Wharfedale, both pianos feature high-quality components including full Renner action – Renner being the renowned German manufacturer and supplier to the world’s most prestigious piano makers. A pleasure to play, the new instruments are also powerful and graceful and possessed of Cavendish’s trademark warm tone, a characteristic of fine British pianos through the ages.
Tone
‘Aside from its appearance, for most people the single most important factor when choosing a piano is the instrument’s quality of tone,’ says Adam Cox, founder of Cavendish. ‘British pianos were unusual in always having a warm, mellow tone and it’s precisely this quality that at Cavendish we seek to imbue all of our pianos with.’
How does one describe it? To my ears it’s rounded and mellow, much like the Yorkshire countryside that is the home of Cavendish. Listen harder, however, and there’s a richness, too, and a depth to the sustain that endures as the sound fades. There are more subtle tonal colours here, too; colours which, perhaps, reflect the natural environment. And that’s the magic of a Cavendish piano – an ability to weave a spell in your mind and on your ears that inspires you to play on and which lingers long after the music has stopped.
The Team
Handbuilt
The tone that is unique to a Cavendish piano is no happy accident. It’s a direct result not only of where, but of how it is built and by whom. Elsewhere in the world, piano manufacture has become highly efficient. In the Far East, modern factories produce hundreds of pianos per day. To keep costs down, much of the process is mechanised. Of course, a piano is, at its heart, made of natural materials but in the name of speed and efficiency, modern processes eradicate the qualities that give a piano its character. Uniformity and predictability are the name of the game.
Without question, quality of construction and materials is important to these manufacturers but, alas, not to all. In any case, even the best, mass-produced piano cannot be produced by machine alone; certain processes require craftspeople with experience and sensitivity if they are to be done well. The difference at Cavendish is that the contribution of such people is not the exception but the rule.
Cavendish Pianos differ from most pianos in that they are hand-built, with no mass-production methods in sight; instead, in their place, painstaking selection, manufacture and assembly by hand are the order of the day.
The skills to perform such work require years of specialised training to acquire. One Cavendish piano alone takes a number of weeks to produce, as Mike Derrett, head technician at Cavendish, explains: ‘The making of our Cavendish action alone takes over 100 man-hours by an action builder. It’s the only way to do it but it ensures the highest quality of tone and feel. In fact, it is accepted that there is no satisfactory mechanised substitute. The hands-on approach is the only way to build the delicate wooden machine that is a piano.’
Accuracy
Where accuracy is required, it is widely held that mechanised production is superior even to a skilled craftsperson. This may be so for many industries but in piano production, when each note possesses subtle differences, only human skill and sensitivity can achieve, for example, that evenness of touch desired by demanding musicians. Not only that but a beautiful tone, too, can only be achieved through skilled and patient craftsmanship, rather than by mechanisation. ‘We pride ourselves on perfect tone and touch,’ says Mike.
The human touch![John Hainsworth, pictured, with a Grenadier Guard jacket made from the famously flawless Haisworth cloth.]()
Traditionally, pianos have always been made by hand and by makers passing knowledge from generation to generation. The advent of the highly mechanised, ‘robot-made’ piano is a far cry from its hand-built counterparts and although mass-produced pianos are often priced around the level of a handbuilt piano, as Cavendish demonstrates, they lack, perhaps, the most important characteristic of any musical instrument: soul.
John Hainsworth, pictured, with a Grenadier Guard jacket made from the
famously flawless Haisworth cloth.
Materials
For Cavendish, what a piano is made from is almost as important as how it is made. Using natural local, resources, without damage to the environment, is fundamental to every step in its production processes.
Sustainably sourced wood – green credentials
Wood is a natural material; no two pieces are exactly alike. It follows, therefore, that every Cavendish piano is very slightly different with its own, unique characteristics. Identifying and working with these characteristics is the job of Cavendish’s expert piano builders who, individually, select each instrument’s raw materials in a process of ongoing quality control. At each stage, the craftsperson pays attention to the ‘feel’ of the materials they are working with, thereby getting the best out of them in a way that a machine never can.
Sustainably created, not manufactured
Cavendish Pianos are built in the traditional way. All wooden actions are hand-built in workshops in the beautiful Dales using world-renowned Abel and Renner hammers. Cases are built by cabinet makers in Otley, Yorkshire, using solid English oak and walnut. Incidentally, the use of solid wood is very particular to Cavendish; very few makers use solid timber in their manufacturing process. The result is pianos that not only continue to give pleasure for years to come but whose looks improve with age.
Beautiful traditional skills, locally crafted
There is no shortage of skilled workers in the piano industry and allied trades in this country. In fact, many components are still made in the UK and exported all over the globe for piano making abroad. Cavendish has drawn on this abundance of British quality suppliers to make a superior product that is truly locally sourced. As Adam Cox explains, ‘We felt it was crazy that British expertise was being used to make the highest quality components for the piano industry and yet no finished products were being made in this country.’ Clearly, with vision, ambition and determination, Adam is succeeding in putting right that particular wrong.
'That’s a beautiful piano which feels like it will be with you and the generation after you!’ - Jamie Cullum
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