OUR KEYBOARD INSTRUMENTS

Our Keyboard Instruments

Anton Walter fortepiano (Vienna, 1795), built by Rodney Regier (Freeport, ME)


Mozart purchased an Anton Walter grand fortepiano when he moved to Vienna in 1781 and resumed composing piano concertos.  He wanted the loudest piano available.  Our Walter piano has two knee pedals – a sustaining pedal to lift all of the dampers and a moderator pedal, by which tongues of cloth are brought between hammer and string to produce a soft, sibilant sound.  Walter was one of the top three builders in Vienna, the others being Nannette Streicher and Johann Schantz.

Nannette Streicher fortepiano (Vienna, 1804), built by Kenneth Bakeman (Kirkland, WA, 1980) 


Nannette Streicher learned her trade from her father, Johann Andreas Stein of Augsburg, who is credited with having invented the highly sensitive “Viennese action,” which flipped the hammer to strike the strings, rather than push it, as modern pianos do.  Nannette supervised the Vienna workshop while her husband, Johann Andreas Streicher, managed the “front office.”  She was a good friend to Beethoven and helped him with practical household matters, as well as supplying him with fortepianos.  Her firm sold their pianos throughout the Hapsburg lands and beyond.  When Mendelssohn visited Goethe in Weimar, he played on the great writer’s Streicher grand fortepiano.

Our instrument has a forte or damper-lifting knee pedal, and a hand pull to activate the moderator stop, by which tongues of cloth are brought between the hammer and the string to produce a soft, sibilant sound.
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