Fortepianos and Modern Grand Pianos

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

I once heard the late and much lamented Ronald Smith playing Chopin's Op. 10 nos. 1 & 3 on an Érard of the kind with which Chopin would have been familiar at the time of writing and then on a fine modern Steinway D; there was no faulting his performances, which were electrifying in themselves, yet that on the Érard suggested to me that the instrument was struggling hard to cope with Chopin's adventurous and imaginative tearing up of the rule book. I suspect that his performance of Alkan's Concerto on the same pair of instruments might have risked bringing forward the earlier one's impending demise...

But perhaps that "struggling hard" is part of "The Music" - perhaps the problem that some listeners have with Chopin comes from the "too easy" performances that they hear on modern instruments: perhaps the astonishing harmonic (& rhythmic & structural) language is best expressed through an instrument that, by its very nature, does not "prettify" (as I've heard it described) the sound?

And, after all that, there's always Robert Simpson's memorable comment that we cannot listen to Bach today as people did in Bach's day because we have listened to Xenakis (and I think that this is the only occasion on which I can recall Simpson referring to the latter composer!)...

Well, yes - and we can't see Rembrandt today as people did in Rembrandt's day because we've seen De Koonig. That doesn't mean we should go over The Night Watch with acrylics. Composers (and certainly composers of this calibre) work with and for and against the sounds they know - I find it endlessly illuminating to hear the Music (albeit with my post-Xenakian ears) played on those instruments (and, yes, ardcarp is absolutely spot on: there are a far greater range of timbral differences between, say, an Erard and a Broadwood from the same year)which the composers would have heard. All else seems transcription, in comparison.

Which, again, is not intended to "belittle" Brendel, Smith, Rubinstein or Charlie Clunk doing his/her Grade Six. One of the most enjoyable Live performances of the Badinerie from the B minor Suite was given by a group of fourteen year-olds: in an arrangement for Steel Band.

[BBMmk2]

This is the kind of discussion I've been hoping for,becausae, with the various kinds of fortepianos that were/are available, with all their different characteristics, it has been very good indeed, as with ahinton's post above, to read in detail about the various composers that were pushing the boundaries of compositionial structures, that needed for manufacturesrs to design a more robust instrumnent that we have today. I cannot imagine the later music of Liszt and Alkan et al, being played on nothing less than a Steinway!

[Dave2002]

I wonder what Shura Cherkassky would have made of a fortepiano?

Matchsticks probably. The pedals dropped off a Steinway piano at one recital by him, though fortunately someone in the audience knew how to fix them back.

PS: Peter Donohoe could be demanding too - imagine playing Prokofiev sonatas on a fortepiano!!!! Simon Trpceski!

[Bryn]

This is the kind of discussion I've been hoping for,becausae, with the various kinds of fortepianos that were/are available, with all their different characteristics, it has been very good indeed, as with ahinton's post above, to read in detail about the various composers that were pushing the boundaries of compositionial structures, that needed for manufacturesrs to design a more robust instrumnent that we have today. I cannot imagine the later music of Liszt and Alkan et al, being played on nothing less than a Steinway!

No need to tax your imagination, try, for instance:



which I have, and it's excellent,



or



These are, after all, the type of instrument Liszt played and wrote for.

For very modest outlay, and with a range of fine executants, there's:



which has some Alkan, too.

[verismissimo]

I suppose that the answer to your first question would have to depend in part on foreknowledge of precisely what you mean by "the obvious" (since that might not necessarily be the same as it would for everyone) but that to your second would almost certainly have had to be provided by Simpson himself, who is sadly no longer with us to be asked...

Presumably he might just as well have cited Beethoven as Xenakis. Or am I missing something?

[Bryn]

... imagine playing Prokofiev sonatas on a fortepiano!!!!

Why, did Prokofiev write them with the intention of their being played on a fortepiano?

[amateur51]

Presumably he might just as well have cited Beethoven as Xenakis. Or am I missing something?

An example of hyperbole, I imagine,

[amateur51]

But perhaps that "struggling hard" is part of "The Music" - perhaps the problem that some listeners have with Chopin comes from the "too easy" performances that they hear on modern instruments: perhaps the astonishing harmonic (& rhythmic & structural) language is best expressed through an instrument that, by its very nature, does not "prettify" (as I've heard it described) the sound?


Well, yes - and we can't see Rembrandt today as people did in Rembrandt's day because we've seen De Koonig. That doesn't mean we should go over The Night Watch with acrylics. Composers (and certainly composers of this calibre) work with and for and against the sounds they know - I find it endlessly illuminating to hear the Music (albeit with my post-Xenakian ears) played on those instruments (and, yes, ardcarp is absolutely spot on: there are a far greater range of timbral differences between, say, an Erard and a Broadwood from the same year)which the composers would have heard. All else seems transcription, in comparison.

Which, again, is not intended to "belittle" Brendel, Smith, Rubinstein or Charlie Clunk doing his/her Grade Six. One of the most enjoyable Live performances of the Badinerie from the B minor Suite was given by a group of fourteen year-olds: in an arrangement for Steel Band.

Great imaginative response, ferney - what did you have for breakfast?

[amateur51]

No need to tax your imagination, try, for instance:



which I have, and it's excellent,



or



These are, after all, the type of instrument Liszt played and wrote for.

For very modest outlay, and with a range of fine executants, there's:



which has some Alkan, too.

Many thanks for identifying these recordings, Bryn. On to the list they go ...

[Tony Halstead]

When I first worked at Augener we were in a very old building, the top floor of which was the Salle Erard concert room, visited by Corno de Bassetto aka GBS.

We often took our lunch time break up there and there was a very old Erard piano, dirty and neglected but still beautiful somehow, It sounded awful after years of silence but I longed to hear it as it had been.

Don't pianos of that type have a softer tone than forte-pianos,which always seem a little hard to my ignorant ears.

Where is waldhorn, who knows all there is to know on the subject ?

Thanks for your kind words, salymap. However I don't regard myself as any kind of 'expert' in this field... it is true that I used to own a very old Broadwood (a bi-strung 'English Grand not a 'Square', with a most beautiful 'una corda' that really was only one string sounding) and I even made a few commercial recordings on it, but I had to part with it when we moved house several years ago. The only 'fortepiano' I now have is a Roland 'Classic' with several harpsichord, fortepiano and organ voices as well as 6 or 7 different historical tuning temperaments. It is about as good an imitation of the real thing that I have ever heard and has the advantage of fitting in the boot of my car as well as never going out of tune or needing a new string!

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Why, did Prokofiev write them with the intention of their being played on a fortepiano?

I understood Dave's comments to be supporting the pro-Fortepiano argument, Bryn - it is as "ridiculous" to imagine Prokofiev being played on the Fp as it is to hear Haydn played on modern Steinway-sort-of-thing?

[Ferretfancy]

I'm not partisan about fortepiano versus modern grand, but it certainly seems that recordings of the fortepiano have greatly improved, or is it that the instruments themselves have? After all they are all reconstructions or restorations, so we don't really know what Mozart heard.

In some of the earlier performances on CD the fortepianos sounded like a modern piano with toilet paper under the strings, surely not was intended, or was it?

The truth is that for all the scholarship, we can never be sure what original performance practice really was, until they invent a time machine.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

The truth is that for all the scholarship, we can never be sure what original performance practice really was, until they invent a time machine.

Indeed; and when they do, we may well find that it's more a case of "original performance practices".

But, "for all the scholarship", we can be sure that it didn't include the sound of a modern Steinway/Baldwin/Bechstein/Yamaha.

[Bryn]

I understood Dave's comments to be supporting the pro-Fortepiano argument, Bryn - it is as "ridiculous" to imagine Prokofiev being played on the Fp as it is to hear Haydn played on modern Steinway-sort-of-thing?

Probably the case. I was still in 'responding to Bbm' mode.

A London venue, which I attend less frequently than I would wish, recently acquired a much needed replacement piano, a 2008 Yanaha C3. Apparently it was something of a bargain, supplied a firm sympathetic to the venue's rationale. However, a pianist friend who helped raise funds for its purchase has found that there is a rather severe problem with the sustain pedal, it's either 'on' of 'off', there are no half measures, which are essential for the music he excels in the performance of. A combination of Googling and consulting an ex-piano-technician colleague suggests the need for a little 'restoration' of the instrument concerned. Apparently the articulation mechanism at the top end of the rod that links the pedal to the dampers needs adjusting by a skilled technician. So it's not just old instruments which fail the 'fit for purpose' test if not well looked after.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

The idea of playing music originally conceived for performance on early pianos means that the resultis an "arrangment" is surely suspect. No-one has changed a note of the music as written on the page. It is merely that the instrument itself has evolved, with improvement in mind. It could however be regarded as a partial arrangement when an editor has extende the range of notes when it is clear that a composer had to restrict the range because of the shorter keyboards at the time.