Conrad Graf Fortepiano Steals the Show at Chamber Concert in Innsbruck

By Markus Schramek

Saturday, February 3, 2024, 7:30 p.m

At the latest chamber concert, it’s not just the musicians who are the stars, but also an almost 200-year-old instrument.

Innsbruck – The Tyrolean State Museum Ferdinandeum (a major construction site from mid-2024 due to renovations) has many instrument treasures as its own. Several fortepianos, the type of piano at the time of Mozart and Beethoven, are cared for and cared for. Sometimes one is allowed out into the world to be played by expert hands.

At the chamber concert on Friday evening in the Haus der Musik in Innsbruck, there is a fortepiano on the podium, built by Conrad Graf in Vienna in 1835. With Andreas Staier, a star (without any airs), a proven specialist, sits at the keys of this special piece of jewelry. This places high demands on the playing technique and, compared to a modern grand piano, sounds so inimitably soft, round and bright.

Delicate, sensitive piano playing is required. Andreas Staier shows it in an exemplary manner. He knows where the hammer is in every phase (to put it bluntly). Together with Daniel Sepec on the violin and Roel Dieltiens on the cello, Staier goes on a journey back in time for two hours. Chamber music must have sounded so exhilarating at the beginning of the 19th century.

The pleasure for the ears increases, dramaturgically logically, with every contribution. Bach’s son Carl Philipp Emanuel, Mozart and Haydn are represented in the program with piano trios. Every mood is catered for, from melancholic sweetness to virtuosic fun.

An increase hardly seems possible. But in Part 2 it takes shape with Beethoven’s Piano Trio in G major. It is the second of three pieces that the composer considered just good enough to be designated as his Opus Numero 1.

The audience experiences four Beethoven movements of beguiling sonority and brilliance. (mark)

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2024-02-04 17:41:52
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