Kurt Saphir Pianos: From Vienna to Wilmette in Seven Generations
Kurt Saphir Pianos has hit the right notes for over a century.
Forty years spent serving musicians on the North Shore is nothing to sneeze at. Yet it’s just a few pages in the extensive history of Kurt Saphir Pianos. The Wilmette business, which sells and services pianos, has been family owned and operated for six generations since it was founded in Vienna, Austria sometime during the early 1800s. Current President Dennis Saphir, son of the business’s namesake, Kurt Saphir, said his father dedicated his life to running the business. “He was here until the day he died,” Dennis said of his father, who passed away on Memorial Day, 2011. Though the piano company was founded in Europe, Kurt Saphir brought his knowledge of musical instruments to the U.S. during World War II, when he took his piano business…
