Carrow McCarn wrote:
>[log in to unmask] writes:
>
>>Ian Lace, of Musicweb, was reading the cover notes for a couple of old
>>Saga LPs of Bach piano music and was very taken with the history of the
>>instrument:
>>
>>http://www.musicweb.uk.net/classrev/2003/July03/Siena_Piano.htm
>
>No matter how beautiful the sound of the Siena Pianoforte is, and it
>is undeniably beautiful, the story is entirely phony. Carmi cooked up
>all of that malarkey. The instrument was the subject, as I recall, of a
>long series of exchanges on this very list, in 1996 or thereabouts. If
>I recall correctly, one of the MCML contributors in those days mentioned
>that the instrument was illustrated in the catalogue of a dealer in
>instruments in Vienna during the very period in which it was supposed
>to be going through all of its vicissitudes.
Let's see now, I don't recall that exchange of posts, so at the risk of
seeming to breathe new life into a myth let me summarize the notes on
the lp dust jacket of my Counterpoint (CPT-1503) recording called "A
Siena Pianoforte Sampler", which has Anatole Kitain playing the Bach
Chaconne, Charles Rosen playing a Scarlatti Sonata (G Major, L.487),
Grace Castagnetta playing variations on Greensleeves, Kathryn Deguire
playing Mozart's "Turkish March"and Marisa Regules playing Albeniz
(Leyenda), Debussy (Children's Corner) and Villa-Lobos (Punch; The Witch
Doll). They expand somewhat on the sensational, if mythical, material
in the above Web site.
It describes the piano as having been sent to the Paris Exposition in
1867, after which it became the City of Siena's wedding gift to the
heir-apparent of the House of Savoy and placed in the Quirinal in Rome
w/ the royal family's other art treasures. The king described it as
"...an Italian original. It was built over a period of four
generations by a father, son, grandson and great-grandson. Liszt
called its sounds 'divine,'and indeed it has even compared with
the harp of King David himself. This instrument once was exhibited
in Paris, and the year after that it was given to me. It is an
upright, and every inch of its shining surface is intricately
carved. A gallery of immortal composers is sculptured in the
wood,each of them from a different land, as if to symbolize that
with music--the language of the soil--they are united, prefiguring
Isaiah's prophecy of peace in the latter days.
"The legend is that this piano was made of wood from Jerusalem,
from the very pillars of Solomon's temple. When the city was
destroyed by Titus his men supposedly carried off to Rome the
two most beautiful pillars of the temple, Joachim and Boas.
In turn they were installed in a new pagan temple, which later
collapsed. The foundation was left standing, and in the Christian
era a church was erected on the site, again using Solomon's
pillars. The legend tells us that this church was knocked down
for the last time by an earthquake and that the wood then was
used to make my wonderful piano."
On a visit to Jerusalem, the king had promised a pianist from Kiev,
Yanowsky, who had settled in there to let him play the instrument,
should he ever visit Rome. It fell upon Yanowsky's grandson, Avner Carmi,
to try to "collect" on that promise years later after Umberto has been
assassinated.. Getting an audience w/ the current king was almost
impossible and Carmi's attempt to get the king's attention in 1934
resulted in his arrest as a would-be assassin and only Schnabel's
intercession got him released.
The liner notes go on to say that, during WWII, Carmi, serving in
the British army in North Africa, was summoned to examine a peculiar
looking piano that had been turned up in the dunes that morning and had
almost been blown up by the mine sweepers. It was encased in a thick
desert-hardened layer of plaster from top to bottom, so that it more
nearly resembled a tomb than anything else. The inside works were
hopelessly sand-clogged. It appeared that all manner of experiments
had been made on it, and it had been rebuilt at least once because the
keyboard obviously had been extended and supplementary strings, hammers
and keys added to the original set. Carmi wondered why Rommel's army
had taken the trouble to lug this museum piece into a combat zone. He
was able to convince the authorities not to destroy the piano as "rubbish".
It was repaired, superficially at least, in short order, well enough to
be usable for military morale purposes, and Carmi returned to his unit
and lost sight of the instrument.
To continue from the notes, the piano, which had made it all over North
Africa, Sicily and Italy, crossed the Mediterranean again, and wound up
in Tel-Aviv w/ a junk deler. It passed through several hands, including
those of a bee keeper who used it as a hive,a peasant who thought it
would maka a fine incubator, a butcher who was sure that meat could be
kept under refrigeration within its five-inch walls. By then, the war
over and Carmi back home in what was now Israel, his children alerted
him to what might be his first job in his reopened piano workshop. He
found the turned-over upright baking in the sun and he say w/ a shock
of recognition that this instrument was none other than his "pal"of the
years before. The plaster was incredibly intact, but otherwise the piano
was battered beyond belief. All the strings, keys, hammers, even the
pedals had been removed. Only the plaster case and the sounding board
remained. When a prospective customer, having changed his mind about
having the piano repaired and wanting his money back, struck the piano
w/ his fist, the plaster casing cracked and the head and torso of a
little wooden cherub came into view. Carmi hurriedly handed over the
money, then feverishly started to remove the rest of the plaster,
eventually succeeding, to reveal an elaborately carved case, featuring
a frieze of plump, drunken cherubs hauling their equally drunken queen
across the piano face with most unmusical leers. Carmi recognized the
Italian king's piano from a picture. He completed the restoration three
years later.
Too bad it's all a hoax!
Walter Meyer
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