EGG HARBOR - Peter Nehlsen didn't want to build one regular, run-of-the-mill piano. No, he wanted something different.

The Washington Island-based piano tuner finished construction of his Omega double grand piano last fall. Just like it sounds, it's two concert pianos conjoined together, with a set of 88 keys at each end and two full sets of strings in the middle, inside a common body, for two pianists to play at once.

Music buffs, and those curious about the instrument, can find out what it sounds like when Jodie DeSalvo and Jeannie Yu face off across from each other to play Francis Poulenc's Concerto for Two Pianos and Orchestra in concerts Thursday and Friday nights at Birch Creek Music Performance Center in Egg Harbor, part of the music academy's Symphony Session.

If you've never heard of a double grand piano before, much less heard one play, you're likely in good company. The only known ones before this were built from sometime in the 1890s to the late 1920s by Pleyel et Cie, the once-prestigious and renowned French piano manufacturer.

Few were built in that span — one report says about 50 — and Nehlsen said most were destroyed in World War II bombing raids. Seven Pleyel double pianos are known to still exist, with only one currently in playing condition, in a church in Bettendorf, Iowa after a massive restoration within the past couple years.

Seems like it might be more simple to just have two pianos out there, but Nehlsen said the double piano creates a different sonic experience. That's because the two sets of strings use the same soundboard, the thin wooden plate under the strings that amplifies the sounds the strings make. If both sides are tuned correctly, even if they have a slightly different sound, it will have a cleaner sound, like one piano instead of two.

"Two pianos together on the same soundboard, that's the heart of it all," Nehlsen said. "The sound of this is all kinds of stuff going on, on one piano ... It sounds like those old piano rolls where there's so much going on the you know it can't be one person playing it. It's a unique concert experience."

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DeSalvo said she doesn't see playing the double piano as a challenge. Quite the opposite, actually.

"This is more advantageous because we're creating the sound together on one soundboard," DeSalvo said. "I think each side has its own unique character and quality. When put together on one soundboard, it's amazing. I don't think it'll be a challenge, I think it'll be exciting."

The Birch Creek concert isn't the public debut for Nehlsen's instrument. It premiered last October with a jazz concert by Joan Reynolds and Richard Westring at the Trueblood Performing Arts Center on the island, then Inna Faliks and Andrew Armstrong used it for a chamber concert in February in Ellison Bay as part of Peninsula Music Festival's February Fest.

"(The sound) was off the map in both cases," Nehlsen said.

But Birch Creek marks its first performance in front of a full symphony orchestra, and Nehlsen is excited about the prospect.

"This is next, having the piano in front of a 70-piece orchestra," he said. "Nowhere else in the world can you hear it. It's going to be epic ... (The Poulenc concerto) will put it through its paces. Some passages are very romantic, some are more like 'dueling pianos.'"

A 40-year dream

Nehlsen began building the double piano in 2014, but it's been on the 62-year-old's mind since early in his piano tuning career.

He said he became a professional tuner in the mid-1970s in Chicago, eventually working as one of the top tuners for Steinway and Sons as well as a clinician for the American Conservatory of Music. He moved to Washington Island in 1985 and continues to work as a tuner, although he balances that with working at his brother-in-law's gravel pit and as chief of the island's fire department.

"I took a college course, and it turned out being my life's work without really trying," Nehlsen said. "I still do it professionally. I wouldn't say it's a full-time thing up here, but that's a lifestyle choice."

Nehlsen said he came up with the idea of building a double piano early in his career.

"Right from the start, it was a bucket list sort of thing," Nehlsen said. "Pretty early on, I decided if I was gonna build anything, it would be a double piano. There are hundreds of manufacturers out there for a regular piano."

He was able to use his experience and frequent contact with pianos to good use when the time came.

"In working on all those pianos, any time I saw something built into a piano I liked, I took notes saying this would be a good thing to build in. You could say I've been doing field research for 40 years."

Nehlsen began by making the case for the instrument in the fall of 2014 but didn't do much afterward until September 2017, when he said he "just committed to myself to do it." He finished the job about a year later.

He estimates he put about 2,000 hours of labor and roughly $10,000 in parts into his creation, although he admitted he didn't keep close tabs on either. The soundboard was shaped from spruce (the preferred material) to Nehlsen's design by a Canadian company and a few other parts had to be ordered, but most of the craftsmanship is Nehlsen's. He ordered the wood for the case from Marion Plywood Corp. in Wisconsin and used wood from the island when possible.

"The vast majority is my work," he said. "Other than the soundboard, it's just working with rough materials. 

"I've done just about everything you could do to a piano. It's easier to start from scratch. All of that came from a significant amount of experience."

Following the Birch Creek concert, a performance on the double piano and talk by Nehlsen takes place at 10 a.m. Aug. 6 as part of the Washington Island Music Festival. He's discussing future appearances with concert organizers in Madison, Lake Geneva and at Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill. And although he's not looking for work, he's not against the idea there might be a market for an instrument as unusual as this.

"I'm anxious now to get this out into the world," Nehlsen said. "I'm not looking for a new venture at this point, but I don't have any problem imagining this turning into something where we can turn it into a small factory. Because this truly is a unique instrument. I had no right to expect it to come out as well as it did.

"It's a very rockin' machine, if I do say so myself."


Peter Nehlsen's double grand piano is featured in the "Vive La France: A Piano Spectacular" concerts at 7:30 p.m. Thursday and Friday in the Dutton Concert Barn at Birch Creek Music Performance Center, 3821 County E, three miles east of Egg Harbor. In the concerts, Jodie DeSalvo and Jeannie Yu will join the Birch Creek Symphony Orchestra to play Francis Poulenc's Concerto for Two Pianos and Orchestra. General admission tickets are $29 for adults, $10 students, $6 ages 11 and younger; a limited number remain.

For tickets or more information, call 920-868-3763 or visit


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