This Jause is a highlight from Classical Cake, op. 4 — “The Pianos Used in Mozart and Beethoven’s Era.” In this excerpt, we’re talking with Ingomar Rainer, chair emeritus of Historic Performance Practice at Vienna’s University of Music and Performing Arts, about the differences between fortepianos and modern pianos.

TRANSCRIPT

Even though this piano we have behind us that was built in 1800 in Vienna, that's the concert instrument of the time… It's still a different sort of sound world than we have from Bösendorfer or Steinway. And so what are these differences and what causes them?

The qualities of intimacy, of very soft, very intimate colors and everything.

And for me, the main problem is that you have an action which, for example, in the hammers of these early fortepianos have five grams. We have now 30 – more than six times the weight. And so we have on one side a capacity and a possibility of real orchestral force of real orchestral tone. On the other side, the loss of intimacy.

[Music playing]

Musically we have the problem… For example – you know this very well – in Mozart sonatas are very often these Alberti basses: accompaniment in the left hand. This becomes, if played on a modern piano, it would become thick. It would become loud. It would become too important. On the old pianos, it is just right.

[Music playing]

I've certainly discovered as I've become more and more enthusiastic about the fortepiano is this intimate nature. It should be approached as something completely different. You know, it is a different world and these pieces somehow make a little bit more sense when you look at them from the fortepiano they would be written for.

Yeah. And, these characteristics make, for me, a lot of musical experiences which are not possible on our contemporary instruments.

[Music playing]

The other problematic side is ornaments. Ornaments on a modern piano are rather clumsy or they become something too present, too close to us and not ornaments.

[Music playing]