The piano action is an amazing mechanism. Its crucial task is to transfer musical energy seamlessly from the pianist’s fingers to the piano strings, allowing the pianist’s musical intentions to be transferred accurately and artistically through the instrument. To accomplish this “seamless transfer of energy” properly, all 8000+ parts of the piano action must remain stable and work together perfectly at all times – over the course of time. Even …
Franz Liszt's “Chopin” was published for the first time in installments by "France Musicale" in 1851, less than two years after the death of the artist who was celebrated there.
Carolyne Sayn-Wittgenstein influenced Liszt both in the first draft of the text and in the two reprints of 1879 and 1882. Carolyn, who lived alongside Liszt for fifteen years, and who kept an eye on him for the rest of his …
Beethoven's journey through the rapidly developing world of the piano can be traced through the seven pianos that he played during his lifetime.
Copies of all of them have been built from scratch by piano maker Chris Maene.
When living in Bonn, Beethoven visited the Stein workshop in Augsburg and got to know the instruments thoroughly. The sound was light and very clear, but the touch was like a harpsichord’s. Striking …
It is Christmas Eve in 1850 and the "Columbus Times & Sentential" publishes the announcement of the sale of a twenty-acre (8-hectare) manor house and estate just outside Columbus, Georgia, on the Alabama border.
The owner, Wiley F. Jones, covered in debt, adds that the auction house Harrison's is also selling "a dozen Negro slaves raised in Georgia" (translated: raised up properly) including a coachman and a good seamstress.
Without failing the clarification, …
The recital is an invention of romanticism or, more exactly, of an intensely romantic artist, Franz Liszt, and of an artist, Ignaz Moscheles, who was always looking at romanticism with a little reserve.
The term "recital on the piano" was adopted by Liszt in London on June 9, 1840.
Before inventing the denomination, however, Liszt he had invented the event: the show of a musical solitary knight struggling with a dragon called …