When Paul McNulty first set foot in Prague within the winter of 1994, he didn’t know that an opportunity encounter with a piano from Amadeus would change the course of his life. The piano, similar to the one featured in Miloš Forman’s 1984 movie, had been inbuilt Prague. When he realized that one other instance existed, curiosity led him to make the journey from Amsterdam to see it. What he discovered was greater than an instrument; it was a revelation.
The piano sat within the workshop of a harpsichord maker, surrounded by stacks of tonewood. “At the moment, I had no soundboard wooden in any respect,” Paul recalled. “It doesn’t develop in Holland; it’s a must to go to Switzerland or discover sellers in Belgium. It was all the time sophisticated.” The builder provided him not solely a five-year provide of soundboard wooden but in addition the promise to chop down one other tree for him the next winter. “I drove dwelling to Amsterdam with the piano, and I assumed, nobody ever advised me this earlier than.”
Quickly after, he despatched a fax to ask if he might transfer into the workshop. The reply was sure. So, he packed up his instruments, machines, and hopes, and moved to the Czech countryside, the place he stayed for 3 years earlier than discovering his own residence and workshop in a close-by village. “Life is just what I do,” he mentioned with quiet satisfaction. “I don’t actually have a social life besides in music and touring. I’m busy, busy, busy.”
Paul’s journey into piano constructing started within the Seventies, after leaving the conservatory. “I didn’t succeed as a performer,” he admitted. “So I went to piano tuning faculty, and that was very useful. I discovered I had some expertise, simply in one other path.” His curiosity in piano historical past deepened by means of lectures given by a trainer who labored nights at William Dowd’s harpsichord workshop in Boston. It was the period of the early music revival, and fortepianos, the predecessors of the fashionable piano, captured his creativeness.
Mozart: Piano Concerto No. 24 in C Minor, Okay. 491: I. Allegro (Carried out by John Gibbons utilizing McNulty’s first constructed piano)
In 1985, he constructed his first piano solely by hand. “It took three months, eleven hours a day,” he mentioned. That instrument later toured Europe with John Gibbons and the 18th Century Orchestra and finally discovered a house on the State Academy of Music in Oslo. “Deadlines are the regulation,” he laughed. “A professionally made instrument can’t be made slowly. There’s a rhythm to the work, similar to in music.”
His understanding of fortepianos, early grands, and the evolving designs of the 18th and nineteenth centuries is each scholarly and intuitive. He described the shift from iron to metal strings within the 1840s, which revolutionized piano development. “When delicate metal wire appeared, builders might create longer strings and larger rigidity,” he defined. “Franz Liszt’s 1846 piano by Louis-Constantin Boisselot, for instance, had the identical rigidity as a contemporary Yamaha live performance grand, which is about 30,000 kilos.”
The hammers of a Pleyel 1830 copy
Paul has replicated devices created by among the nice builders of the previous. To call a couple of, the checklist consists of Johann Baptist Streicher, Conrad Graf, Friedrich Buchholtz, and Camille Pleyel. Every, he mentioned, reveals each a technological and an aesthetic evolution. “The early pianos of the Rococo period had been principally harpsichords with hammers. However as Beethoven demanded extra energy and maintain, builders responded. By 1810, Nannette Streicher had expanded her father’s design to 6 octaves to satisfy Beethoven’s wants. The piano turned orchestral.”
The duplicate of Chopin’s 1825 Buchholtz piano
When he replicated Chopin’s 1825 Buchholtz piano, the mission held deep cultural significance. The unique instrument, as soon as owned by the Chopin household, had been destroyed in 1863 throughout an rebellion. “Once I completed the duplicate, it was premiered in Warsaw on March 18, 2018, the very same day Chopin premiered his F minor concerto in 1831,” he mentioned. “The Minister of Tradition and the Prime Minister gave speeches earlier than the premiere live performance and publicly acknowledged that ‘The piano Chopin performed was burned on the street, and now we now have it again.’”
“Chopin’s Warsaw Piano” -A TV documentary of Paul McNulty making Buchholtz piano:
Frédéric Chopin’s Concerto in E minor, Op. 11, Rondo. Vivace (carried out by Dmitry Ablogin on McNulty’s “Chopin’s Warsaw piano” and Freiburger Barockorchester)
Whereas Paul’s work bridges historical past and craft, his spouse, pianist Viviana Sofronitsky, embodies the creative soul of the fortepiano. For her, the revelation got here later, after years of learning and acting on fashionable devices.
Viviana Sofronitsky carried out on McNulty Pleyel, Walter, Graf, Stein & Boisselot fortepianos
“I didn’t suppose I might ever play fortepiano,” she mentioned with a smile. “Once I was at school, I noticed vintage pianos in museums, however they had been unplayable, simply curiosities. I couldn’t think about making music on them.” When Viviana was a pupil on the Moscow Conservatory, this system required college students to play music from all durations. However she felt she didn’t really perceive Romantic music, so she centered on Classical and really fashionable repertoire. But even inside the Classical interval, she felt one thing was lacking. “Even Mozart didn’t converse to me,” she recalled. “I assumed one thing was flawed with me. I assumed I wanted to work tougher, to play extra, and in some way it could come. However it by no means did. So, I turned to the music I felt I understood higher, that are the baroque and the very up to date, additionally began enjoying harpsichord and organ.”
To review the harpsichord, Viviana went to the USA, to Oberlin Faculty, and there her life modified fully. At some point, there was a fortepiano live performance that includes Mozart trios. “It was like a door opened,” she mentioned. “All of a sudden, every little thing made sense, the stability, the construction, the colors. I requested to attempt the fortepiano afterwards, and I realised how pure it felt. Solely due to the fortepiano, I lastly understood the language of Mozart.”
From that second, she started to see the fortepiano as a residing voice, not an artefact. “It’s like listening to the composer converse in their very own language,” she mentioned. “Should you learn poetry in translation, you lose the tone, the rhythm, the internal life. However whenever you hear it within the unique language, it turns into alive once more. That’s what occurs whenever you play Mozart, Schubert, or Chopin on the instrument they knew.”
Viviana’s analogy extends past the fortepiano. “The music of some composers, resembling J.S. Bach, preserves its that means and affect even when performed on a special instrument from the one it was written for. However different composers, resembling C.P.E. Bach or Rameau, are rather more intently linked to the instrument for which their music was written. When it’s performed on one other instrument, it loses its that means. That was the explanation why the good music of the French harpsichordists was hardly ever carried out till Wanda Landowska introduced the harpsichord again to the live performance stage within the early twentieth century.
Her years acting on Paul’s reconstructions have reshaped her artistry. “Now I can play this music even on a contemporary piano with higher understanding,” she mirrored. “When you’ve heard the unique voice, you always remember it. You translate it, however you continue to keep in mind its sound and spirit.”
Of their dwelling outdoors Prague, the sound of historical past comes alive day by day, a dialog between maker and musician, husband and spouse, artwork and craft. Every fortepiano they construct and play revives not only a sound however a human connection throughout centuries: a voice that also sings, tenderly and in truth, in its personal language.
Paul McNulty Fortepianos: fortepiano.eu
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