Beethovens Broadwood Piano

[judith]

A customer in a music shop where I once worked told me that Beethoven smashed up his Broadwood piano into pieces. I was shocked! Can anyone tell me if this is true?

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All the world`s indeed a stage

[Peter]

Check out the pianos page on this site (scroll down to the pictures) and you'll see Beethoven's Broadwood is very much in one piece!
www.kingsbarn.freeserve.co.uk/bpianos.html

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'Man know thyself'

[Gurn Blanston]

On my CD of Schiff playing several bagatelles on Beethoven's own Broadwood, it does talk about the instrument falling into pretty bad shape after sitting idle for several years. When Liszt acquired it he gave it a complete restoration and on his death he left it to a museum (in Hungary I think), so it wasn't always in perfect condition, but B didn't break it up. He did tend to pound the keys hard enough to break strings though!!


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Regards,
Gurn
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That's my opinion, I may be wrong.
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[melvyn]

Originally posted by judith:
A customer in a music shop where I once worked told me that Beethoven smashed up his Broadwood piano into pieces. I was shocked! Can anyone tell me if this is true?

As Gurn says, Beethoven's piano did fall into disrepair, but Beethoven didn't 'smash it up' deliberately, as your question implies.

Because of his deafness, Beethoven's piano playing in his later years was somewhat less than satisfactory. The soft passages were completely inaudible, and his forte playing was so violent that it broke the strings and shook the piano to pieces! Beethoven was of course completely unaware that there was anything wrong.

Melvyn.

[spaceray]

Didn't Beethoven take the legs off at one point and have it resting on the floor?

[Pastorali]

I would be also surprised at such treatment of his piano. It was surely strained and maybe few maintained. Visitors reported that many things stood on the piano and a lot of dust covered it.

The bad habit of deliberately destroying instruments came probably only last century in fashion.

[Rod]

Originally posted by spaceray:
Didn't Beethoven take the legs off at one point and have it resting on the floor?

Yes but considering he moved around so often this is not surprising (the legs were detached for transit), he probably felt it wasn't worth the effort putting them back on!

The piano has been fully restored and was used by Melvyn Tan to record a CD of smaller Beethoven pieces, which I have and you'll be hearing in due course via the mp3 page.
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"If I were but of noble birth..." - Rod Corkin

[This message has been edited by Rod (edited March 15, 2004).]

[Peter]

Originally posted by Rod:
Yes but considering he moved around so often this is not surprising (the legs were detached for transit), he probably felt it wasn't worth the effort putting them back on!

The piano has been fully restored and was used by Melvyn Tan to record a CD of smaller Beethoven pieces, which I have and you'll be hearing in due course via the mp3 page.

I can't imagine that he would have attempted to play the instrument like that -how would use the pedals for one thing?!

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'Man know thyself'

[Rod]

Originally posted by Peter:
I can't imagine that he would have attempted to play the instrument like that -how would use the pedals for one thing?!

I presume in this condition Beethoven was not considering playing the instruments concerned in any serious manner, if at all.

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"If I were but of noble birth..." - Rod Corkin

[This message has been edited by Rod (edited March 15, 2004).]

[judith]

Thanks to everyone who replied to my question about Beethoven`s Broadwood piano. I`m really glad that this customer was wrong and I didn`t want to believe anyway that a man as dedicated to music would deliberately smash his instrument. The info on the piano page is very interesting and I`m lokking forward to hearing Melvyn Tan`s recording of the sonatas.

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All the world`s indeed a stage

[Joy]

That's right about Beethoven's piano legs being off the instrument. Rod's conclusions about that has to be correct. I believe he also had a few pianos in his home so he surely played the ones that were all in one piece!

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'Truth and beauty joined'