section_path: Music/Beethoven's pianos
section_name: Beethoven's pianos
paragraph_text: Beethoven's pianos
  
  Beethoven's earlier preferred pianos included those of Johann Andreas Stein; he may have been given a Stein piano by Count Waldstein. From 1786 onwards there is evidence of Beethoven's cooperation with Johann Andreas Streicher, who had married Stein's daughter Nannette. Streicher left Stein's business to set up his own firm in 1803, and Beethoven continued to admire his products, writing to him in 1817 of his "special preference" for his pianos. Among the other pianos Beethoven possessed was an Érard piano given to him by the manufacturer in 1803. The Érard piano, with its exceptional resonance, may have influenced Beethoven's piano style – shortly after receiving it he began writing his Waldstein Sonata – but despite initial enthusiasm he seems to have abandoned it before 1810 when he wrote that it was "simply not of any use any more"; in 1824 he gave it to his brother Johann. In 1818 Beethoven received, also as a gift, a grand piano by John Broadwood & Sons. Although Beethoven was proud to receive it, he seems to have been dissatisfied by its tone (a dissatisfaction which was perhaps also a consequence of his increasing deafness), and sought to get it remodelled to make it louder. In 1825 Beethoven commissioned a piano from Conrad Graf, which was equipped with quadruple strings and a special resonator to make it audible to him, but it failed in this task.