A single note builds into a spiralling piece of piano music as we see the Steinway & Sons Grand Model B Piano being constructed from start to finish in the famous Hamburg workshop... This is the concept behind theMaking of a Steinway & Sons Model B Piano, featuring a bespoke soundtrack composed by the Piano Brothers and artfully shot by our videographer Glen Milner, who spent three days capturing the elaborate handcrafted process involved in creating one of these iconic instruments. Read on for more details:

Who makes it? Steinway & Sons produced the first Model B, also known as "the perfect piano” in April 1878. It’s now their best-selling piano.

What’s the story? The Model B’s ancestor was the Monitor grand, designed by C F Theodore Steinway in the 1860s and named after a US battleship because it was the first Steinway to have a full cast iron frame that covered the tuning pins. In 2014 Steinway will celebrate an unrivalled 130 years of the Model B's unchanged design and production.

How is it made? It takes over 12 months for more than 50 craftspeople to create a Model B grand piano, which is constructed from over 12,000 parts. The continuous rim is bent into shape in a piano-shaped press, and then left to acclimatise for around six months. All the bracing bars and joints in the sound case are dowelled and glued without screws to enhance the sound quality. The action and damper mechanisms are hand-assembled, so that they fit each instrument perfectly. Before completion, many hours are spent tuning, voicing and regulating the piano.