Playing on a Larger Scale : The Fazioli F-308, said to be the world’s largest piano, makes its last L.A. stop today--unless you’ve got $150,000 to spare.

What comes from Italy, weighs 1,550 pounds and measures 10 feet, 2 inches front to back?

Give up? It’s the world’s said-to-be largest piano, the Fazioli Model F-308.

For six months, a Model F-308 has been making appearances across the United States. Here in Los Angeles, it’s been on display all this month, for anyone to try out, at a local piano showroom. And it has been played by professionals at the Hollywood Bowl (at a jazz concert, Sept. 13) and at the Jazz Bakery in Culver City (last week). Today at 4 p.m., in the Bing Theater at the County Museum of Art, pianist Mario Feninger will test it with the U.S. premiere of Ferrucio Busoni’s long-lost Concerto for piano and string quartet.

The oversize piano, one of 20 in existence, is the handiwork of Paolo Fazioli, 51, founder in 1978 of Fabbrica di Pianoforti Fazioli. His factory, where a staff of 21 turns out between 50 and 60 instruments a year--most of them, standard grand pianos between 5 feet, 6 inches and 9 feet, 2 inches in size--is in Sacile, Italy, 45 miles north of Venice.

Both a pianist and a mechanical engineer, Fazioli joined his family’s fine-furniture business as a young man, then followed his father’s wish--which had been derailed by World War II--to diversify the company’s product line.

In the mid-1980s, according to Steven Witkowski, a spokesman for the founder, and one of the company’s three United States dealers, Fazioli became interested in the task of making a world-record-size piano.

“It was Paolo’s idea to build the ultimate piano,” Witkowski remembers. “He sought the challenge.”

Producing such an instrument is not simply a matter of multiplying all the specs by a new factor and starting up the table saw, he explains.

“Building pianos up to a standard length of 9 feet or 9 feet, 2 inches, is pretty much the same thing. Beyond that size, everything changes because the balance between bass and treble alters completely. The problem is to keep the two elements in proportion, in scale.”

Paolo Fazioli’s solution was in the engineering. He created his own computer program to measure the particular acoustical factors in the wood used to make the large soundboard, the heart of any piano. (The spruce used in Fazioli soundboards, not incidentally, comes from Val di Fiemmes in Italy, from the same forests where Antonio Stradivari chose the wood for his violins.)

From the time the wood is ready to be made into soundboards until the completion of a Fazioli piano, it takes “about two years,” dealer Witkowski says. The 10 feet, 2 inch piano takes “probably 10% longer.” Its price tag reflects the extra attention: a whopping $150,000.

What does the huge piano sound like?

According to piano dealer David Abell, who oversaw the Southern California portion of the piano’s tour, the Fazioli handles its size-induced treble-bass difficulties gracefully. “The bass is stunning,” he said, adding that, on the 9-foot, 6-inch Bosendorfer Imperial piano--the next largest piano available, and one that Abell also represents--”the bass tends to overpower the treble.” whereas the Fazioli “seems to compensate for the difference.”

From at least one player’s perspective, the piano also succeeds. Hungarian-born pianist Tamas Ungar encountered the F-308 at the Texas Christian University/Cliburn Institute for young pianists, which he heads. This year the students could choose to play a Steinway, a Yamaha or the touring Fazioli F-308 for performances. As one might expect, he said, most went for the familiar Steinway, but the Fazioli gained some converts.

Ungar was among then. From the first time he heard it and tried it out, he thought it was “different than anything I ever played.”

It has “a stunningly beautiful, lyric tone, which seems to grow as one gets farther away from it. The piano commands a huge dynamic and color range, but foremost a luscious sound. This is not a percussive quality, but rather a large, orchestral sound.”

Even so, says Ungar, “one must get used to it, which takes some time.

“The problem is controlling all the many things at your fingertips.”

The touch, in particular, “is different than what we are used to with the Steinway: there is not much resistance from the keys, and people find that unusual. The middle register is particularly lush, yet it seems to overpower the top.”

Ungar says that the large piano was heard in Ed Landreth Hall at TCU, the same room where the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition is held, every four years, and that this 1,400-seat auditorium seemed to be the right size for the instrument. “In smaller rooms, the real character of the piano would probably not be clear.”

Witkowski, whose Little Rock, Ark., firm provided the piano to the institute, agrees.

“The 10-foot-2 instrument, obviously, is for major halls only,” he says, “That is, halls that can provide the breathing room a piano of this size needs. Hearing it in a hall too small for all this resonance is not satisfying.”

That was also a problem when the big piano went on display at David Abell Pianos, in the Fairfax district, two weeks ago. A couple of hundred players and listeners arrived at a Sunday open house to try out and hear the big Fazioli. Limousine-sleek, elegantly low-profile, the piano was disappointing in the stageless, low-ceilinged room. It didn’t seem that different from the smaller instruments nearby, though it clearly possessed the mellowness and warmth that seems to be characteristic of Faziolis whatever their size.

If you need to fit the piano to the right-sized space, you also need to get it through the door. There are, says Abell, “logistical considerations” to dealing with an F-308.

“It’s just difficult to foresee the things that might come up in merely negotiating corners and hallways and entrances to studios. Of course, nine-foot pianos are regularly a problem--but that extra foot can bring up new challenges.”

The piano travels with its own, oversize skidboard, and must be handled, during loading and unloading from its truck, by no fewer than four strong people, the West Coast dealer says.

After the concert today--unless a local big-piano-lover decides to buy it--the piano travels by truck to Utah for several performances, then goes to Little Rock where Witkowski plans to keep it through November.