Original Instruments

1 LP - Toccata FSM 53 612 (p) 1975

1 LP - Toccata FSM 53 613 (p) 1975

1 LP - Toccata FSM 43 603 (p) 1976

ORIGINALINSTRUMENTE - Tasteninstrumente Vol. 4

	Long Playing 1
Franz Schubert (1797-1828)	Grand Rondeau A-dur, Op. 107; D 951 *		11' 33"	A1
	Andantino varié h-moll, Op. 84 Nr. 1; D 823 *		8' 45"	A2
	Fantaisie f-moll, Op. 103; D 940 *		18' 08"	B1
	- Allegro molto moderato · Largo · Allegro vivace · Tempo I
	Long Playing 2
Anton Diabelli (1781-1858)	Sonate D-dur, Op. 33 **		10' 22"	C1
	- Allegro moderato	3' 47"
	- Andante cantabile	2' 40"
	- Rondo Allegretto	3' 55"
Carl Maria von Weber (1786-1826)	Huit pièces, Op. 60 **		32' 59"
	1. Moderato	2' 52"		C2
	2. Allegro	4' 17"		"
	3. Adagio	3' 55"		"
	4. Allegro, tutto ben marcato	4' 19"		D1
	5. Alla Siciliana. Allegro	3' 56"		"
	6. Tema Variato. Andante	3' 09"		"
	7. Marcia. Maestoso	5' 23"		"
	8. Rondo. Scherzando vivace	5' 08"		"
	Long Playing 3
Anton Diabelli (1781-1858)	Sonata C-dur, Op. 37 *		12' 27"	E1
	- Allegro moderato · Andante cantabile · Rondo · Allegretto
Franz Schubert (1797-1828)	Grande Marche es-moll, Op. 40 Nr. 5; D 819 **		10' 02"	E2
Johannes Brahms (1833-1897)	Zwei Walzer, Op. 39 Nr. 15 und 16 ***		3' 32"	E3
Friedrich Kuhlau (1786-1832)	Sonate G-dur ****		8' 20"	F1
	- Allegro · Arioso · Rondo · Allegro
Carl Maria von Weber (1786-1826)	Andante con Variazioni, Op. 10 Nr. 3 *****		5' 35"	F2
Muzio Clementi (1752-1832)	Sonate Es-dur ******		8' 50"	F2
	- Allegro maestoso · Andante · Tempo di Menuetto


Fritz NEUMEYER & Rolf JUNGHANNS, Vierhändige Klaviermusik


(Long Playing 1)	(Long Playing 2)	(Long Playing 3)
- Hammerflügel von Conrad Graf, Wien 1824 *	- Hammerflügel von Nannette Streicher, Wien 1816 **	- Hammerflügel von Michael Rosenberger, Wien 1810 (restauriert von Rudolf Dobernecker) *
		- Hammerflügel von Conrad Graf, Wien 1824 (restauriert von Martin Scholz) **
		- Hammerflügel von J. B. Streicher u. Sohn, Wien 1864 (restauriert von Hugo Haid) ***
		- Schrankflügel, unsigniert, süddeutsch um 1820 (restauriert von Rudolf Dobernecker) ****
		- Tafelklavier von Joseph Bogner, Freiburg/Br. um 1840 (restauriert von Rudolf Dobernecker) *****
		- Hammerflügel von John Broadwood and Sons, London 1817 (restauriert von Kurt Wittmayer) ******


	Luogo e data di registrazione		Schlos Bad Krozingen (Germania) - 1975 (long playing 1 & 2) / 1976 (long playing 3)
	Registrazione: live / studio		studio
	Recording Supervision		Paul Dery
	Edizione LP		TELEFUNKEN - 6.35584 EK - (3 LP's - durata 38' 26", 43' 21" & 48' 46") - (p) 1975/76 - (c) 1981
	Originale LP		TOCCATA - FSM 53 612 - (1 LP - durata 38' 26") - (p) 1975 - Analogico (long playing 1) TOCCATA - FSM 53 613 - (1 LP - durata 43' 21") - (p) 1975 - Analogico (long playing 2) TOCCATA - FSM 43 603 - (1 LP - durata 48' 46") - (p) 1976 - Analogico (long playing 3)
	Prima Edizione CD		-
	Note		Production by Toccata.

Long Playing 1

The Fantaisie in f minor and the Grand Rondeau in A major are the two great pieces for piano for four hands, which Franz Schubert wrote in 1828, the year of his death. They are highlights in the rich and, until the beginning of our century, much loved genre of four hands piano music. The proud rhythms of the Hungarian folkmusic and a melancholic Puszta atmosphere alternate with sweet and blissful Viennese melodies and alpine country triad motives. Added to this was the inclination of the late Schubert towards the perfection of form by use of counterpoint. These elements are changed in the Grand Rondeau into an idyllic and in the Fantaisie into a tragic form and prevade the Andantino varie as well.
All these pieces originate from the romantic spirit of the 19th century in the sense of E. Th. A. Hoffmann’s saying: music opens to man a "secret realm of spirit"; and as stated in Schubert’s song "An die Musik" it takes man away into a "better world". Schubert reaches this aim of the romantic musician in an ingenious way through his harmony, which is enlarged through new tonal connexions in an unimagined manner. The experience of a romantic magic of sound reaches its height when the piano music, written by Schubert, is played on an instrument that corresponds to the ideal of the composer: the pianoforte (Hammerflügel) by Conrad Graf. This masterpiece of Viennese piano-building has a transparence of overtone and the easy sensitive touch of the classical Viennese pianoforte. It possesses, however, a cantabile abundance and an unique variability of timbre, which is produced through the style of registration and the use of the so-called "changements" (see below).
We can conclude from the specially subtle dynamic instructions that Schubert composed for such an instrument as he asks for differenciated shades up to a threefold pianissimo with diminuendo.
Our instrument with its pure wooden construction, the leather covered hammers and the thin strings was built by Conrad Graf in the year 1824. The four pedals change the sound in the following manner:
1. Removal of the damper.
2. Pianoregister: a piece of cloth is slide between hammers and strings and this produces a soft and delicate tone.
3. Bassoonregister: a parchment scroll is pressed upon the bass strings and this produces a buzzing sound.
4. Displacement of the keys: For every tone exist three strings. When the keys are displaced only two or one string is touched.
The instrument was restored by Martin Scholz, Basel, and Rudolf Dobernecker, Freiburg im Breisgau.

Long Playing 2

On April 16th 1813, Carl Maria Weber wrote to his brother from Vienna: "I have just bought two superb instruments, a Streicher and a Brodmann. In a single day I must have seen a good fifty different pianos, and not one of them could hold a candle to these two."
The piano built by Nannette Streicher née Stein which is played on this recording is a sister instrument to the one Weber bought. Nannette Streicher was the daughter of the Augsburg organ- and piano-builder Johann André Stein (1728-1792), the most famous craftsman of his time, who was also highly esteemed by Mozart. Nannette, who was born in 1769, was already being acclaimed as a child prodigy for her piano-playing at the age of eight. However, Mozart judged her rather critically on his visit to Augsburg in 1777: "She has the ability to be a great musician, she has genius, but she won’t achieve anything in this way." She did not, however, become a piano virtuoso, but learnt the craft of piano-building from her father, taking over the workshop after his death. In 1794 she married Andreas Streicher, a boyhood friend of Schiller’s. (It was Streicher who helped Schiller to flee from Stuttgart, where he had been forbidden to write literature outside the scope of his work as an army doctor, to Mannheim in 1782.) The piano workshop was moved to Vienna, the centre of contemporary musical life, and the firm soon gained fame throughout Europe under the name "Nannette Streicher née Stein a Vienne". Alongside Weber and Beethoven (a personal friend and protégé of Nannette’s), E.Th.A. Hoffmann, Zelter, Reichardt and many others were clients of the firm, and prized its instruments greatly. Thus the Streicher salon became a rendezvous for the music-lovers of Vienna.
The piano pieces for four hands by the successful composer and music publisher Anton Diabelli are noble music for just such a refined audience: salon music which avoids descending into shallowness and superficiality.
The orchestral fullness and diversity of timbres that characterize Streicher instruments may have offered particular inspiration to the master of the Romantic orchestra, Carl Maria von Weber. His Huit Piéces op. 60 combine superlative compositional technique with allusive poetic content: they can be regarded as scenes from Weber’s operas transferred into the purely instrumental medium.

1) The moderato can be understood as a forest scene which combines the idyllic and the sinister.
2) The allegro, with its noble march rhythms, recalls the knight Huon of Bordeaux from the composer’s Oberon.
3) Oberon himself, King of the Elves, leads his retinue to the dance.
4) Years before Schubert wrote his piano pieces for four hands, inspired by Hungarian folk music, Weber composed this allegro, so full of the proud, melancholy sounds of the steppes.
5) The rocking rhythm of the siciliana recalls the song of the mermaids from Weber’s opera Oberon.
6) The theme of the brilliant and witty variations is a popular song of Weber’s own invention.
7) The demonic march is a reflection of history: foreign troops marching through Vienna, capital of the then Austro-Hungarian Empire. In the trio an image of freedom seems to hover before us.
8) The rondo is an early waltz, in which, as in nearly all of Weber’s compositions, the sinister and the demonic are evident.

The Streicher piano’s richness of timbre results from the so-called "transformations", which are employed in a similar way to the registers of an organ or harpsichord, and are achieved by the use of four pedals:

l) Suspension of the damping: only employed as a special effect, so that the strings sound noisily confused.
2) Piano register: a strip of cloth is inserted between the leather-covered hammer and the strings, giving a soft and suppressed tone.
3) Bassoon register: a roll of parchment is pressed against the strings in the bass, producing a droning sound similar to that of the old bassoon.
4) Displacement: the keyboard and the piano action are shifted so far to the right, that not all three strings available for each sound are struck, as is usual, but only two, or even one (una corda). The piano tone becomes more delicate and transparent as a result.

Long Playing 3

The term "Hammerklavier" originally meant the same as "pianoforte" or "fortepiano", and was used by Beethoven as a Germanicization of the latter names, foreign to the German language. Nowadays, "Hammerklavier" covers the range of pianotypes current from roughly the time of Mozart to that of Brahms, which were predecessors of our modern piano, but not the 20th century piano itself, although this is, strictly speaking, a Hammerklavier too.
The early piano types from the time of Mozart still resemble the harpsichord in construction and in the sound produced.They were also referred to as "cembalo col piano e forte", and subsequently as "pianoforte". The instrument’s development continued by way of many intermediate stages: in an effort to attain a greater volume of sound, pianos were gradually built with thicker strings, larger hammers and a stronger soundboard. All this in turn required a more solid construction: the light box-like harpsichord design began to be replaced by a wooden frame, which was initially light, but became increasingly sturdy. Eventually, iron stays were necessary to reinforce the frame; iron plates were then added, and around 1860 the last step was taken - a full iron frame.
Likewise, the mechanics of the piano became increasingly heavy and more complex, the last development being the introduction of the double repeating action by Sebastian Erard in 1823. It was now possible to play much faster and louder, a development which corresponded to growing virtuosity in the medium. Equally, the change in the tone sought after by musicians - a change which occurred with other instruments at the time - meant that certain individual sounds, like combined harmonics and a clear, sentimental sound, were abandoned in favour of a more robust sound which was rather less transparent.
The development of the instrument from the harpsichord-like fortepiano to the armour-plated grand piano only took about eighty years, and it was in this period that most of the piano music played today was written. Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven, Schubert, Schumann and even Brahms owned instruments which were noticeably different from our modern piano. They composed for these pianos, and, in their piano writing, took into account the tonal characteristics of their particular instrument. The first half of the 19th century was a period of rapid change for piano building and piano music alike.
This fact is most clearly demonstrated by the instruments built in Vienna, the contemporary centre of the piano-building industry: Viennese pianos are, without exception, distinguished by a sensitive, delicate action. The grand piano built by Michael Rosenberger of Vienna in 1810 still has the lightness and transparency of the Mozartean instrument, but it already produces a more powerful sound, and great alterations to the tone can be achieved by the use of no less than six different pedals. Among the tone changes possible are the distinctive burr of the bassoon register (a parchment roll is placed against the strings in the bass) and the so-called janizzary register, produced by a large drum and chimes built into the piano. The latter, also called "Turkish music", brings exotic colouring into the sauntering rondo of the entertaining sonata by Diabelli, who was a successful music publisher as well as a composer.
The Conrad Graf grand piano was only built some fifteen years later, but it is quite differently constructed: it is heavier than the Rosenberger instrument, and the sound has more of the cantabile about it; it is more romantic and somehow bulkier, yet it remains able to differentiate notes right down to a clavichord-like pianissimo. Graf’s instruments were highly esteemed by Schubert, whose exact dynamic specifications in his scores, extending to ppp, certainly demand the polychromatic registers of the Graf piano. Schubert’s mournful E-flat minor march is influenced by the main theme of the composer’s "Wanderer" fantasy.
A sister instrument to our Johann Baptist Streicher piano dating from 1864 stood in Brahm’s appartment in Vienna. It is still without an iron frame, and still has the "Viennese action", as opposed to Erard’s double repeating action, and leather-covered felt hammers. Brahm’s waltzes for four hands show felicitously how the phlegmatic Hamburger made himself at home in the Vienna ambience.
The upright piano was derived from the Hammerklavier, and was built in a variety of forms in the 19th century: there was the lyre-piano, the giraffe-, pyramid- and cabinet-pianos. All four models functioned not only as musical instruments, but as decorative furniture in the Biedermeier period. And it was genuine "Biedermeier music" that came from the pen of Friedrich Kuhlau, a native of Uelzen in Lower Saxony. Kuhlau, later Kapellmeister at the Danish royal court, wrote a touching pot-pourri that reflects this ornamental but superficial period: the fairy-tale world of Hans Christian Andersen mixed with the colourful bustle of the Tivoli Gardens.
In terms of sound, there is scarcely any difference between the upright and the grand pianos built at the time. The smaller baby grand as we know it today was a later phenomenon. Its predecessor was the square piano, an instrument which derived its external appearance from the clavichord - in fact, it looks like a clavichord without legs. More modest in sound than the full-size grand pianos, the square piano is ideal for playing small-scale, unpretentious pieces like Weber’s attractive Andante con Variazioni.
The great rivals of Vienna built instruments since the 17th century had been English pianos: these were from the outset equipped with a less sensitive, more robust action, which made richer-sounding playing possible, and in the end they completely supplanted the Viennese pianos on account of their more ample sound. The Broadwood piano played here is the same model as the instrument which the London piano-builder Broadwood sent Beethoven as a gift in 1817: for a while the piano afforded renewed pleasure to the composer, who was steadily going deaf. The Italian composer Clementi, whom Beethoven highly respected, was also the joint-owner of a piano factory, and built similar instruments.