Chopin's piano maker gets the chop

[ardcarp]

I heard on the news this morning that Pleyel at St Denis is finally closing down. Domage.

[Anna]

There was a long and very interesting item about Pleyel et Cie on CFM at 5.30am this morning and their association with Chopin, I had not realised he used one to compose whilst in Majorca with George Sand, nor, to be honest, that he'd actually lived in Majorica! However, it offered no explanation why production had gone from 2000 pa to only 17 in such a short space of time. Perhaps pianists here will know.

(why did I have CFM on at that unearthly hour - well I woke up, pressed the on switch and found the radio was tuned to it ....)

[Hornspieler]

.....(why did I have CFM on at that unearthly hour - well I woke up, pressed the on switch and found the radio was tuned to it ....)

Naughty! Go and stand in the corner!

HS

[Richard Tarleton]

I had not realised he used one to compose whilst in Majorca with George Sand, nor, to be honest, that he'd actually lived in Majorica!

The winter spent in Valldemosa in the mountains of northern Mallorca was not a success - a cruel north wind called the Tramuntaner blows across the Balearics in winter - this from Wikipedia:

In Majorca one can still visit the (then abandoned) Carthusian monastery of Valldemossa, where she spent the winter of 1838–39 with Chopin and her children.[4] This trip to Majorca was described by her in Un Hiver à Majorque (A Winter in Majorca), published in 1855. Chopin was already ill with incipient tuberculosis (or, as has recently been suggested, cystic fibrosis) at the beginning of their relationship, and spending a winter in Majorca — where Sand and Chopin did not realize that winter was a time of rain and cold, and where they could not get proper lodgings — exacerbated his symptoms.

Quite apart from that it wasn't good for the piano

I've been on several birdwatching trips to northern Mallorca - it's stunning.

This from Alan Walker's biog of Liszt:

When Chopin played in the salons of Paris before a select audience drawn from high society, it was on the silvery-toned Pleyel with its light action that he gave his incomparable performances. Liszt had often played the Pleyel and found it wanting:he scathingly referrred to the instrument as a "pianino". The seven-octave Erard, with its heavier action and larger sound, was more congenial to him.

So Pleyels weren't much cop even then. Anna, this on the closure of Harrods piano dept!

[Sir Velo]

So Pleyels weren't much cop even then.

Perhaps we shouldn't be surprised then that the Warsaw Chopin Institute's mammoth project to record the complete Chopin on period instruments used Erards.

[vinteuil]

Perhaps we shouldn't be surprised then that the Warsaw Chopin Institute's mammoth project to record the complete Chopin on period instruments used Erards.

They use Pleyels and Erards.
Chopin preferred Pleyels for his own use and for select gatherings; he used the louder Erards for the more 'public' performances.

Typical of Liszt to prefer the more vulgar Erard to the more subtle Pleyel...

[ardcarp]

Responding to Anna's point, piano making in Europe just cannot stand the labour costs. Apart from the mega-expensive brands (and Germany/Austria seems to go for the top end of the market) the Far East is the place to make them...where a skilled worker probably gets a quarter of a European wage-packet. I understand that The Pearl River company in China is making squillions of pianos to supply the post-Mao parents' need to civilise their only children by 'putting them to the piano'.
China also makes pianos with European-sounding names which are imported in huge quantity to the West.

[gradus]

Terrible shame that another european maker has gone and with them generations of skill and expertise. Difficult to believe that it was English-made grands that were the house pianos when the RFH first opened its doors.
Re Liszt and his pianos, I recall seeing and playing a few notes on another Liszt piano, no Erard but a Steingraeber kept in their Bayreuth factory. They also have a letter from a certain Herr Wagner praising the piano recently sent to him above those of a rival firm messrs Steinway. Steingraeber still make excellent pianos.

[Richard Tarleton]

They use Pleyels and Erards.
Chopin preferred Pleyels for his own use and for select gatherings; he used the louder Erards for the more 'public' performances.

Typical of Liszt to prefer the more vulgar Erard to the more subtle Pleyel...

Resolutely not rising to the bait Chopin only gave 30 public concerts in the whole of his career. Most of his performance was in salon settings where the Pleyel could be heard. Liszt, who gave thousands in the years up to 1847 and who invented the piano recital as we know it, needed something that would stand up to travel and be heard in larger halls. He wrote to Erard after playing to 3,000 people in La Scala,

Let them not tell me any more that the piano is not a suitable instrument for a big hall, and that the sounds are lost in it, and the nuances disappear, etc. I bring as witnesses the three thousand people who filled the immense Scala theatre yesterday evening.....

Of a Pleyel he was given to play in Bologna and Florence in 1838 he wrote:

The keyboard is prodigiously uneven, and the bass, middle and upper registers are all terribly muffled

He borrowed a Streicher on this occasion, apparently, as Erard could not always keep up with him on his travels. The point being I think that the piano was goinmg through a period of rapid evolution, and individual instruments could be terrible.

[vinteuil]

Liszt, who gave thousands [ of concerts] in the years up to 1847 and who invented the piano recital as we know it, needed something that would stand up to travel and be heard in larger halls. .

... yes, he needed a larger public.

Hence he needed the larger, louder, more vulgar Érard. [ Vulgus - the multitude, the people ].

Nothing, I suppose , "wrong" with that.

But to go on from that to decry the sensitive, subtle, nuanced Pleyel...


Why, you might as well say that a Fender Stratocaster* was preferable to a baroque lute...

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* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fender_Stratocaster

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frankly, (a clavichordist writes to a lutenist) - I'm surprised at you!


.

[Richard Tarleton]

But to go on from that to decry the sensitive, subtle, nuanced Pleyel...


Why, you might as well say that a Fender Stratocaster* was preferable to a baroque lute...

frankly, (a clavichordist writes to a lutenist) - I'm surprised at you!

I don't think it is quite fair to equate the technical advances which Liszt demanded of his pianos with electrification! And I apologise for my flip paraphrase of Liszt in my first post.

He was merely the first to do what every pianist does these days, i.e. to tour, and give piano recitals in large venues. Erards were only a stage (and his intense concert-giving career was short, ending in his 37th year, after which he devoted himself to composing, teaching and being a kapellmeister). He clearly had a restless interest in his instruments and their manufacture. When he sealed his house in Weimar prior to departing for Rome in 1861, it contained Beethoven's Broadwood, Mozart's spinet, the Alexandre "piano-organ", an Erard, a Bechstein, a Boisselot, a Streicher and a Bosendorfer. The last two were his regular workhorses, though he no longer performed in public.

Can you or anybody recommend a HIP performance of Chopin for me, preferably on a Pleyel? The last all-Chopin recital I went to, Mr Demidienko had the house Steinway at our local venue on its knees begging for mercy.

[teamsaint]

I don't think it is quite fair to equate the technical advances which Liszt demanded of his pianos with electrification! And I apologise for my flip paraphrase of Liszt in my first post.

He was merely the first to do what every pianist does these days, i.e. to tour, and give piano recitals in large venues. Erards were only a stage (and his intense concert-giving career was short, ending in his 37th year, after which he devoted himself to composing, teaching and being a kapellmeister). He clearly had a restless interest in his instruments and their manufacture. When he sealed his house in Weimar prior to departing for Rome in 1861, it contained Beethoven's Broadwood, Mozart's spinet, the Alexandre "piano-organ", an Erard, a Bechstein, a Boisselot, a Streicher and a Bosendorfer. The last two were his regular workhorses, though he no longer performed in public.

Can you or anybody recommend a HIP performance of Chopin for me, preferably on a Pleyel? The last all-Chopin recital I went to, Mr Demidienko had the house Steinway at our local venue on its knees begging for mercy.

[vinteuil]

:

Can you or anybody recommend a HIP performance of Chopin for me...

... I assume you already have the 21 CD box "The Real Chopin", the complete works on period instruments produced by Narodowy Instytut Fryderyka Chopina (NIFC), the National Chopin Institute in Warsaw, using various Pleyel [1847, 1848] and Erard [1849] instruments. with a dozen performers including Nelson Goerner, Fou Ts'ong, Kevin Kenner, Nikolai Demidenko... Essential.

Then there are some lovely CDs on the alpha label with Arthur Schoonderwoerd on an 1836 Pleyel - 'Ballades & Nocturnes', 'Mazurkas, Valses. & autres Danses'

A nice Erard [1837] is used by Alexei Lubimov on his Erato CD of the Ballades, Barcarolle, Berceuse.

But do get the nifc box. You won't regret it!

[Richard Tarleton]

Thank you for these! A visit to B&Q will also be due shortly.....