music Have you ever heard a Clementi forte-piano? Muzio Clementi was both a excelent pianist and a shrewd businessman. He owned a firm in London that manufactered forte-pianos: Clementi & Co . These forte-pianos use the so-called "English action" descendant of the original Bartolomeo Cristofori design. They have greater dynamics than the Viennese instruments, such as Walter or Graf.

At first sight it may seem that the English piano-fortes are less subtle than the Viennese, since dynamics is generally obtained at the expense of subtlety. However the english builders were ingenious and devised a lever, — better called a sliding button — located at the right of the keyboard that shifts it and allows the hammers to hit only one or two strings, opposed to the "regular" three string hitting. This is called the una corda lever.

This permits the piano-forte to produce an hypnotic sonority, like if the musical notes are floating in the air: a very dark sound.

In the sample that I've selected you can hear this sonority.

There are at most 14 pianos like this in the world and I dont know how many of them are in playing condition. This instrument is early 19th century.

As far as I know this is the only recording in the world with this model. The recording itself is wonderful: perceptive of the acoustics of the instrument. It was supervised by Joop Klinkhamer, whose workshop in Amsterdam restaured the instrument. His knowledege of the instrument can be heard in this recording.

The performance is wonderful: Jacques Ogg plays the piano-forte and Marc Pantus — baritone — sings. Their performance is both sober and abandoned — very clear: subtle.

Listen to a sample track: Schäfers Klaglied by Václav Tomášek in MP3 or Ogg/Vorbis.

Listening to the track we understand why the Lied could only appear when this instrument became available to the composers. Its capacity to produce a dark sound is paramount for evoking the moods that the songs allude to.

This recording is unpublished. If you are interested in having this unique register of this magnificent instrument send an email to clementi This text is invisible is here just to defeat spammers' bots. The domains from where these buggerscame from should be all blocked.@ I know that in the proccess some innocent bystanders would be caught on the onslaught, but this is a way to put pressure on lazy clients.perusio.com. If there's enough interest the CD will be launched.

Alack, I must end in tone more somber than the song in the track.

If you come to Portugal and visit the Palácio de Queluz you won't be able to see this instrument. Thanks to the stupidity of the person (ir)responsible for the Palácio de Queluz the forte-piano is closed in a room unaccesible to the visitors. Moreover this room has no climatization whatsoever — exposing this delicate instrument to damages by temperature and humidity: Queluz is a damp place. The frame of the piano is of wood, and since the tension on the strings can be as great as three times the tension of a harpsichord string it warps quite easily. It already has a minor warp — I should say had a minor warp, since I haven't seen it for quite same time, I don't know what's the current condition.

Unfortunately there are still persons like these in charge of monuments in Portugal. Sad but true. :(