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