Her paintings are not her only legacy. Amrita Sher-Gil’s grand piano made by legendary piano makers, New York-based Steinway & Sons, is also part of her legacy. At present in the care of the Delhi Symphony Orchestra Society (DSOS), the piano is housed in the community hall of the Judah Hyam Synagogue at Humayun Road. This year, the piano celebrates its centenary year.

“The piano was made in 1909 and the casting date is cast on the mainframe. It is largely believed that Amrita’s father Umrao Singh Sher-Gil gifted her the piano when she was in her early 20s, studying art in Paris,” says Gautam Kaul, Secretary of DSOS. The piano is one of the five grand pianos available in Delhi for concerts.

On her return to India in the late1930s, Sher-Gil brought the piano along—first to Shimla where she painted intensively and travelled to observe and represent Indian villagers and their way of life—and later to her uncle’s enormous estate in Saraya near Gorakhpur. “Sher-Gil almost abandoned music when she fell in love with collector Karl Khandalavala. She was trained by her concert pianist Hungarian mother, during the early growing up days in Budapest,” says Kaul.

She died in the December of1941 and the piano was forgotten after her death until in 1964 when caretakers of Sher-Gil’s estate decided to put it up for a public auction. Meanwhile, it was during the 60s that the Delhi Symphony Orchestra (DSO) was taking its first steps. General JN Chaudhury, one of the founders of DSO had already acquired musicians from the Ballroom orchestra that played in the Ashoka Hotel. “There was a staff retrenchment going on at the Ashoka and they had disbanded their ballroom orchestra. The 35 members became the core members of the DSO. Then arose the immediate need of a piano,” recalls Kaul, 69.

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