Historic grand piano: "You almost become a little addicted to this sound"

There are only a few historical grand pianos from Beethoven's time that can still be played in public. LMU owns one of them. Interview with the director of the Institute for Musicology, Professor Hartmut Schick:

The fortepiano was built in Vienna in 1825, exactly 200 years ago, by Nanette Streicher, and has belonged to the Institute for Musicology for over sixty years. What makes it so special?

Hartmut Schick: It sounds like you're listening to an entire orchestra. Back then, the ideal of having the grand piano produce the same tone from the lowest to the highest notes had not yet been established. In the lower registers, the grand piano can sound like a bassoon, in the upper registers like a flute, and in the middle almost like a clarinet. Added to this is the overaction mechanism, which means that the hammers do not strike the strings from bottom to top, as is usual, but from top to bottom, making the sound more powerful. Nanette Streicher's piano manufacturing company registered the patent for this design in 1823. Our instrument is the 19th grand piano built there according to this principle; all 18 previous ones have been lost. According to our research, it is therefore the oldest grand piano with so-called overstriking mechanism that has been preserved worldwide.

How the grand piano came to LMU

How did he get from Vienna to Munich to LMU?

We don't know how he left Vienna. The earliest trace we have leads to Bremen, to the Rabus piano workshop. My predecessor, the musicologist Thrasybulos Georgiades, placed an advertisement in 1963: “Well-preserved grand piano from the Beethoven or Schubert era wanted for sale.” The piano maker Rabus responded and negotiations began. The instrument came to LMU for 10,000 Deutschmarks and was used for concerts, but also for normal student lessons. You can't really imagine that today, it's far too precious and delicate for that.

Now the students are no longer allowed to play?

Well, in special cases they are allowed to try it out under supervision.

What happened then with the grand piano?

When I came to LMU 25 years ago, the grand piano was untuned, silent and broken in the library. It was actually only used as a storage space. The usual fate of such instruments is to go to a museum, where they are optimally preserved but no longer played. However, it was important to me that the instrument was brought back to life, because an instrument that doesn't sound is dead. Fortunately, the University Society donated 40,000 Deutschmarks when I took up my post, with which we were able to have the piano thoroughly restored. Robert Brown, a specialist piano maker from Oberndorf an der Salzach, fitted new piano strings, restored the soundboard and in 2002 we were actually able to play the piano again. Our first concerts took place in the lecture hall and not in the main auditorium, because it is always said that historical instruments are much quieter than modern concert grand pianos. At some point, we tried it out in the auditorium.

The sound: truly a revelation

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And how was that?

It really was a revelation. Of course, I was familiar with other instruments and many pianos from the 19th century, but I never really liked them, because in the second half of the 19th century in particular, grand pianos were built heavier and heavier to fill large concert halls. That is still not a sound that I like today. Our instrument from 1825 sounds much slimmer. It is almost delicate in sound and yet powerful enough. The grand piano fills the auditorium effortlessly. That is really enormous and also speaks for the great acoustics there. Even in the last row you can hear everything perfectly, a wonderful concert hall. Several recordings have already been made there. The pianist Tobias Koch has recorded all of Beethoven's bagatelles on our grand piano and Dmitry Ablogin, who will also be playing our next concert, recorded Beethoven's Diabelli Variations in the auditorium during the coronavirus pandemic. Ablogin is really in love with this grand piano.

He's not the only one. The writer E.T.A Hoffmann himself owned a string grand piano and wrote about this instrument: “Sounds floated out of the beautiful string grand piano that enveloped the mind like fragrant dream figures” and in the 1796 Jahrbuch der Tonkunst (Yearbook of Musical Art) it says that all those who “seek nourishment for the soul” should get themselves a string instrument. Where does this magic come from?

The grand pianos made by the piano manufacturer Streicher were immensely popular among piano virtuosos in the 19th century. Ludwig van Beethoven loved them more than anything, but Robert Schumann and his wife Clara also played on them. Even Johannes Brahms bought a Streicher grand piano in 1858. Nanette Streicher was a remarkable woman. She was the daughter of a famous Augsburg piano and organ builder, who introduced her to piano making at a very early age. She performed as a pianist for the first time at the age of seven and played Mozart at the age of eight. After the death of her father, Nanette, who was still called Stein at the time, took over the company, later running it on her own and marrying Schiller's best friend Johann Andreas Streicher, also a very interesting musician. She moved to Vienna, built up her piano manufacturing company with over 20 employees and hosted salons where everyone who was anyone came and went - including Beethoven. She was friends with Beethoven, even lived in the same street at times, and often gave him advice on raising his nephew and managing his household at his request. Nanette Streicher ran her company for 30 years - without her husband, who was only an employee. That is quite a remarkable career, which is another reason why this grand piano is something special.

A sensitive instrument

Are there any other Streicher instruments left?

There are two other Streicher grand pianos in Bavaria, one in the Deutsches Museum and the other in the Germanisches Nationalmuseum in Nuremberg. But neither of them dates back to the Beethoven era and neither of them is played any more. We have the only instrument that you can - and should - actually hear. However, our string grand piano is a very, very sensitive instrument, a note can drop out from time to time and it usually has to be retuned during the concert break - it's all a balancing act. But when this instrument sounds in the large auditorium, people are always completely enchanted. I think you almost get a bit addicted to this sound and the enormous wealth of colors.

On May 9, Dmitry Ablogin will play the concert “Beethoven and Early Romanticism” on the string grand piano. The concert will take place at 19:30 in LMU's Great Hall. Admission is free.