For under $1K you are severely limiting your choices, even assuming that you are going to look for used speakers.
To state the obvious,, most speakers that are crisp and clear in the uper registers will reproduce piano music well. It's the full range (bass chords) that will prove to be most problematic to reproduce realistically.
I have had the best luck with ELs and planar speakers - Apogee ribbons and/or hybrids, or Maggies as Magfan and Drdennis suggest. The problem might be your "smallish" room. These speakers are dipoles and need some space around them to breathe.
If you are looking at cones I am a fan of the French speaker mfgs. Focal/JM Labs, Triangle or (my preference) JM Reynaud as Philojet recommends. Again, room sonics and speaker placement are going to be critical.
One more thing: if you have a piano in the room, I have had very good success by carefully positioning the piano between the speakers. Everything you read will tell you not to do this, but if you do it right you will have some wonderful sympathetic reinforcement from the piano's soundboard. It has worked better for my with dipoles than direct radiating (cones), but you might give it a try. I have used that method to demo a Yamaha Disklavier system, and it was hard (but not impossible) to tell whether it was the piano or the system making the music.
To state the obvious,, most speakers that are crisp and clear in the uper registers will reproduce piano music well. It's the full range (bass chords) that will prove to be most problematic to reproduce realistically.
I have had the best luck with ELs and planar speakers - Apogee ribbons and/or hybrids, or Maggies as Magfan and Drdennis suggest. The problem might be your "smallish" room. These speakers are dipoles and need some space around them to breathe.
If you are looking at cones I am a fan of the French speaker mfgs. Focal/JM Labs, Triangle or (my preference) JM Reynaud as Philojet recommends. Again, room sonics and speaker placement are going to be critical.
One more thing: if you have a piano in the room, I have had very good success by carefully positioning the piano between the speakers. Everything you read will tell you not to do this, but if you do it right you will have some wonderful sympathetic reinforcement from the piano's soundboard. It has worked better for my with dipoles than direct radiating (cones), but you might give it a try. I have used that method to demo a Yamaha Disklavier system, and it was hard (but not impossible) to tell whether it was the piano or the system making the music.
