Mozart’s piano returns home to Vienna for the first time since 1791

Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/pi...1#ixzz2AcmTl8jG


The piano on which Mozart wrote all of his late concertos returned home to Vienna on Thursday for the first time since the composer's death in 1791.

The fortepiano that Mozart played almost daily for nine years will stand in his former Vienna home, now a museum, for two weeks, culminating in a concert of Mozart works.

Mozart bought the instrument from Anton Walter, the most famous Viennese piano maker of his time, in 1782. The prolific composer wrote more than 50 works for the fortepiano on it, many of them in the apartment on Vienna's Domgasse.

Mozart and his wife Constanze lived in the grand apartment in the shadow of St Stephen's Cathedral, where they married, at the height of Mozart's fame as a composer and soloist.


Towards the end of the decade, he became impoverished as the ability of his aristocratic patrons to support music was sapped by the Austro-Turkish war, and he was forced to move to the suburbs, taking his piano with him.

After Mozart's death, Constanze gave the instrument to their eldest surviving son, Carl Thomas, who donated it to the then Cathedral Music Association and Mozarteum on what would have been the composer's 100th birthday.

The piano is now part of the permanent exhibition at the Mozart family home in the Austrian city of Salzburg.

Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/pi...1#ixzz2AcmbpHDD

Interesting, you can hear it being played in this video. Doesn't sound much like a piano to me (digital piano forum joke).

It sounds like a 40-year old Wurlitzer spinet that I played not too long ago at a friend's house.

We should all be grateful for the instruments we have. My humble K3 is much more of a joy. To my ears, at least.

Oh I so would like to see it in the flesh as it were! I havev a mozart CD which uses an authentic piano of mozart's. Do we know how many he had in his far too short life?