More Pleyel from 1860

[Stephen Birkett]

ric rit:

>1860 is what they are saying at the museum. I am not sure that that date is
>exact.. I can find out for you tho.

Let me have the serial number. I can tell pretty easily from that. What is 
the keyboard compass? And how many iron tension bars does it have?

>Hmm.. I will have to take a picture of this Broadwood square I have, and a 
>few
>of the Hafner forte the University has. On the latter, clearly someone 
>sometime
>used some kind of brassy coloured plain wire strings all the way down the 
>bass
>except the last 4 tones. Perhaps you know what this material is ?

The "brassy stuff" in the bass is ......... brass.

Certainly this was used on basses of earlier pianos. But in the 20s most 
builders began to use covered bass strings instead,. Certainly by the 30s, 
and by 1860 I would not expect to see any piano with plain brass bass 
wires. Wound bass is one ot the factors that makes say a Graf of 1826 sound 
"more modern" than a Streicher of 1826.

>Here is a longer cut that has the higher notes played a bit, and is also
>recorded towards the end of the session. They had two tunings prior to doing
>the recording, and thats all. So I am not sure how much of this is out of
>tune-ness and how much is just plain problems with the high notes... 
>probably a
>mix.

Thanks. Interesting. I don't find the treble bad. Tuning sounds a bit off 
maybe, perhaps loose pins or some other mechanical reason from the 
"restoration". General tone up top sounds right. And very nice bass of 
course, as has been mentioned. [the singer guy is sounding a bit the 
chain-smoking like Reynaldo Hahn]

For interest and comparison I've put an mp3 file on my website to 
demonstrate the sound of an 1842 Erard - also from a commercial recording. 
[If anyone wants the CD details I can pass on the number and artist 
information - it is well worth having]. To hear the clip go to 
http://real.uwaterloo.ca/~sbirkett and click on the only "link" in the 
links section of the navigation stuff on the left (called Erard 1842 - 
Brahms). It's an 8 minute movement so about 8 MB file.

Stephen

Stephen Birkett Fortepianos
Authentic Reproductions of 18th and 19th Century Pianos
464 Winchester Drive
Waterloo, Ontario
Canada N2T 1K5
tel: 519-885-2228
mailto: sbirkett@real.uwaterloo.ca
http://real.uwaterloo.ca/~sbirkett