Description
Nameboard: rosewood with white rectangular name label with Resinoy?? style brass inlays to either side inscribed “Patent / John Broadwood & Sons / Manufacturers to her Majesty / Great Pulteney Street Golden Square”
No. 8698 top R side of wrestplank.
Adhesive label to L of number”: illegible
Features
Compass: 6-1/2 octaves CC-f4: 78 notes
Keyboard: single unreversed manual
Naturals : ivory naturals, ebony sharps
Pitch: A 415 Hz
Tuning: equal tempered
Action: upright back-striking action with check at top of case – “sticker” action
Hammer coverings: felt
Bridge: divided at F# – G
Strings:
- bass bridge; CC-F# (19 notes) bichord wound copper on iron core.
- treble bridge; G-f4 (59 notes) bichord iron
Dampers: pivoted felt overdampers; CC-c#3, 62 notes
Wrestpins: top of case
Hitchpins: CC-b (36 notes): bottom of case
c1-f4 (42 notes); bentside
Frame: timber
Pedals: L; una corda, R; damper lift
Case: mahogany with rosewood hinged rose coloured silk front above keywell, paimted timnber doors below keywell
Keyboard-fallboard lid: cylindrical as for case
Music desk: folding music rest on ledge on insdie of lid
Legs: two tapered hexagonal legs with acanthus leaf capitals
Dimensions: 1904mm high x 1220mm wide x 670mm deep at keyboard, 286 cm elsewhere
Repertoire: Mendelssohn
Provenance: purchased from Ian Pleath, London
Condition category: I
Rectification required: none
Concert dates: 23.07.88, 19.03.89, 20.05.89, 24.04.94, 21.04.96, 14.07.02, 16.05.04,22.05.02, 26.08.07, 05.07.09, 12.08.12
Concert use:
K.Power 23.02.88, 21.04.96, 22.05.05, 26.08.07, 12.08.12
N.Routley : 04.03.89
C.Rae-Gerard/L.Power : 20.05.89
V.Mead : 24.07.94
P.Rickard Ford: 14.07.02
M.Brimer : 05.07.09
The cabinet fortepiano was created in an attempt to provide for bourgeois houses an instrument midway in quality and power between the ordinary domestic “square” fortepiano and the concert “grand” instrument. The Schureck Collection contains one of the earliest known surviving examples of this peculiarly English creation, also by Broadwood (No. 102, of 5-1/2 octaves, from c.1805); this instrument, adjacent to the dining room, is awaiting restoration.
The present instrument represents, in contrast, the final stage in the cabinet fortepiano’s evolution, before its replacement by the “modern” upright, essentially the creation of Robert Wornum in 1844.
Commentary
Serendipitously, the Collection contains not only one of the first Broadwood cabinet fortepianos ever produced (serial no. 102 of 1815) but also one of the last, the series ceasing at Serial no. 8963 or 1856 (Wainwright. 329) and the last recorded survivors being Serial no 8462 of c 1848 and Serial no. 8876 of post 1850 (Clinkscale II.60). This, with the whole range of intervening serial numbers by year of manufacture, reflect declining interest in this type with the ris of its domestic alternative, the cottage piano, ancestor of the modern upright.
The name label describes Broadwood’s as “Manufacturers to Her Majesty,” and Mendelssohn would frequently have played such instruments in his private concerts for the young Queen (acceded 1837) and her Prince Consort, himself no mean composer and accomplished pianist, during his almost annual visits to England, for which there is documentary and iconographic evidence.; however, such fortepianos are eminently suitable for the whole piano literature of the early nineteenth century, from Beethoven to Schumann, and tonight’s concert presents this music as it might have been heard in a fashionable London town house around mid-century.
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