How is a piano recorded?

Thanks Beavis. I'll take a look.
I was standing about 6-8 ft away from the piano, and it certainly sounded as a monolithic unit, no 'L to R piano soundstaging' as in many recordings. BTW, it sounded great!

Most solo-piano recordings are done with the lid off and with the microfones either facing the pianist or his/her back. That's why we get upper frequencies on one side and lower frequencies on the other side of the soundstage. I own very few solo-piano recordings, but one I can recommend and which has some but not lots of the above-described 'stereoness', is by Mieczyslaw Horszowski (whew!), Nonesuch 9 79160-2, named something like 'Mozart/Chopin/Debussy/Beethoven'. It contains 2 Chopin nocturnes, o. 15 #2 (my fave) and o. 27 #2, plus Debussy's Children's Corner plus Beethoven's Piano Sonata #2, o. 2 #2. It was recorded digitally by Max Wilcox, usually NOT one of my favorite balance engineers, but this time he got it right, IMO. The piano has a VERY nice tonality and presence that sounds quite real at correct levels without being too forward.

I believe the CD is out of print--at least I couldn't find it among other Horszowski recordings at Tower--but I recently found 2 copies on Amazon.
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I guess I'm outing myself as an "audiophile" but this talk about a live musical instrument reminds me of a story about a turntable... :)

Someone I worked with was demonstrating a certain high-end turntable to a difficult customer who didn't think it would make a beneficial difference. The customer brought in his table and some Brubeck records. When the 'good' table was played, the customer began shaking his head "no, no, no. The sound is no good, it sounds like you closed the lid of the piano."
My friend picked up the customer's record jacket and said "during this phase of Brubeck's career he always played with the lid closed, as you can see in this photo."
The customer quickly made his purchase and went home to rediscover the rest of his collection!
(At least, that's the way I remember it...) :)

In a nutshell-usually poorly. They are tough to get right.
We all wish that records/cd's sounded as you describe-as a whole unit- but most don't.

A few years back I co-funded a recording by a small jazz band featuring a friend - Richard Todd - who is a noted French Horn player. In watching the recording sessions, it was apparent that getting the piano right was going to be the biggest problem. When the set-up was finally complete, the band played its first tune and we had a great sounding take. However, when we listened to playback of the performance, the piano BENCH was squeaking throughout. Suffice it to say that it's very, very tough to get this right.