http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iOAzPbdkFio


this is an 1839 Pleyel owned by Mr. Fadini in Paris

It has been restored over the period of a few years and just recently the hammers have been recovered with a soft rabbit-felt.

it is quite playable and has a nice sonority.

The sound is 'veiled' but not too much I think. The remaining original hammers on my Pleyel which was made five years after this one sound less percussive and have a bit softer sound

This is, I believe, as close as anyone has gotten to reproducing the Chopin-Piano sound so far..

the actual Pleyel felt is a bit different-sounding but this is close

Thank you, acortot! Wonderful recordings. I like the sound of these old "Chopin lifetime" Pleyel grands so much. Another sound, another world compared with the pianos today.

Sometimes I have severe doubts if it is really allowed to play a Chopin nocturne on a Steinway D..

;-)

<duck & cover>

Hammers have nice attack at the start of the sound. Thanks for the post.

From all the restored pleyels I've listened to (about a 50 from youtube) I have to say that the restorations made by Mr Fadini with your incredible help and investigations are very far away from the current pleyels restorations, all have got the sound too hard, even the pleyel built by the great Paul McNulty is very very far away from that Pleyel sound. I have no doubt that the sound of Mr Fadini's Pleyels are almost exact the one built in 1830's!.

Interesting, thank you!

It probably had similar hammers to the Broadwood 7ft I bought from a church hall. It was dated a bit later, I got it for £300 or so 30y ago. Rumour has it Chopin`s early piano was a Broadwood . . . . but I still only got my money back when I sold it.
It was a lovely mellow sound but was a pig to keep in tune!

Do you remember the serial number of the Broadwood?

Chopin played a broadwood regularly near the end of his life in London

I found one like Chopin's, with the same decorated rosewood case for a person here in Italy but it ended up costing thousands of pounds.

The most expensive part of owning one is getting it back into playable state