The fortepiano - Gian Maria Bonino

Beautiful, beautiful! I wonder if the action is heavy and how much feeling one can get... I would love to try one! It seems to me that I understood that one works mainly with articulation with little participation of arm weight (?) So paradoxically, even if the keyboard were lighter, it was surely more tiring to carry out long pieces, besides the lesser resonance.

The sound feels more metallic to me, less full-bodied and also scattered... but in rapid scales, in some ways, it works well...

Hi, can I tell you something based on my personal experience? I play on a fortepiano, specifically Mozart's type... light action, key travel; a friend of mine who is a graduate described the Bontempi piano as ahabab, it has a beautiful sound and I must say I got used to it quite quickly for its repertoire, from CPE Bach to very young Beethoven, I wouldn't change it for any other, but it has different dynamic balances; you can't use weight otherwise the hammer just grunts... yes, it uses an almost harpsichord-like technique, no weight, good articulation but not exaggerated, and above all, one almost never plays in the space between chromatic and diatonic notes, at least on those that are very old, partly because it responds poorly, although less than a harpsichord, but it has smaller and narrower keys and you risk getting stuck

Regarding the sound, consider that the basses and trebles were almost like the harpsichord and the middle register is about as you hear it there

To make you a little envious, on Wednesday I will play the first movement of K 283 at an exam on that fortepiano, a Stein from 1775, a copy obviously, and a Scarlatti sonata on the harpsichord.

Anyway, the theory of 430 Hz... they were not standardized until 1900, before everyone did a bit as they pleased; in the 1700s it even sounded at 390... and some at 450...

ah!!!!!!!!!!!!! what a shame if I still lived in Reggio Emilia I would surely have come to hear you!!!! it will be beautiful!!

as for the technique, you confirm what I was thinking.... poor epicondyles !!!!!! one really needs to know how to do it to avoid annoying tendonitis!

Nah no tendonitis....especially Viennese action keyboards like the Stein are very light and with a key travel that if I'm not mistaken is 1/4 of modern ones

Then from the mid-nineteenth century Broadwood and Clementi imported English action from England almost everywhere, this is true... the structure of the action really changes between the two

Anyway, since we're here, I'll tell you this too... I have started building a clavichord... a small 4-octave instrument with split low octave, range c1-c4... German model, from the south, anonymous, from the end of the 1600s; for now I have only glued the soundboard, with this weather if I continue gluing it's a pain, too humid.

how wonderful!!

then clearly you will show us this jewel ....waiting for photos!!!

good luck with the work in the meantime!!!

Haha well for now it's not much different from... 3 planks of tongue and groove ahah even if in spruce... but I am photographing the whole process in case I come to have to build others...

Dovrebbe essere tipo questo

http://www.phy.duke.edu/~dtl/136126/restrict/after/14/piano/clav1700.jpg

With some small differences... this one doesn't seem to have the split octave and the bridge is slightly curved, maybe due to the centuries.. they are very light strings that undergo torsion over time... mine will probably be around 7 kg... anyway apart from this they are similar... except that... clavichords usually have cloth wrapped around the part of the string that doesn't sound.. mine does not have an upper plate covered in cloth with a similar function... or at least we believe!!!

And to give you a more precise idea of the type of instrument I play in lessons...

I also play the harpsichord... anyway, this is very similar to what I play; this is an Anton Walter from 1795, I think I play a Stein from '75, and Walter and Stein were Mozart's preferred instruments

Open content (youtube)

incredible Mozart, I definitely like him played here more....the ornaments stand out much more....how wonderful!!!! you are lucky.....not many years ago these instruments could only be imagined and touching them and fixing them must be decidedly interesting!!!

only that it is distressing to see certain ones reduced so badly! neglecting an instrument to that extent is as if they had killed a person....!!

That thing in the photo is not a fortepiano!!! Ahahah anyway, I told you that Mozart sounds definitely good on it...

Anyway, it's true that the fortepiano revival is relatively recent, more so than the harpsichord; regardless, I don't build fortepianos—aside from the significantly higher complexity compared to other instruments, at the moment I focus on clavichords and assist a harpsichord maker while he builds harpsichords... two are under construction, both Italian: a hybrid whose base model is an Albana from around 1580 but with several modifications: shorter tail, extended keyboard instead of having a short octave and its 8' registers, and a Giusti that is for him (he already has a Grimaldi that I am currently playing on, but on the Giusti I will be able to play almost the entire Baroque repertoire) with 3 registers—two 8' and one 4'—and a keyboard that is a third longer in the treble (mi6); I can't wait to see it finished. They also commissioned a French Taskin from him, but he practically hasn't started it yet, and my clavichord which we are both working on.

Note: ornaments, besides sounding better, are definitely simpler on both the harpsichord and the fortepiano, and the reason is that both offer less resistance

Tomorrow I have the classroom with the harpsichord and the fortepiano for an hour and a half free, if I can I'll record something... only audio because my video camera is broken

I would listen to it veeeery gladly

meanwhile I have almost finished writing the movement of my suite, I will publish it shortly, I need to fix a few things...

I have just finished studying Mozart and Scarlatti, I even took a couple of photos of the instruments; as soon as I get home I will convert the files to mp3 and upload the photos of the fortepiano and the harpsichord