The Department of Music has acquired this Graf fortepiano replica, which was built by Rodney Regier of Freeport, Maine. Kip Brundage/Belfast, Maine
Malcolm Bilson will inaugurate the Department of Music's newly acquired Graf fortepiano replica with a program of works by Schubert, Chopin, Weber and Mendelssohn Tuesday, March 24, at 8 p.m. in Barnes Hall.
The instrument, ordered some seven years ago, is a copy of an 1824 six-and-one-half-octave Viennese instrument by Conrad Graf and recently was completed by master craftsman Rodney Regier of Freeport, Maine. Graf was the most celebrated Viennese builder of his time. The last piano owned by Beethoven was a Graf, and the Schumanns received a Graf fortepiano as a wedding present.
The Graf fortepiano brings to three the total of replica fortepianos in the possession of the music department, which also owns an original fortepiano, a Broadwood, built in 1827.
The two main works on the program are Schubert sonatas: the Sonata in B-flat Major and the Reliquie Sonata. Both will be recorded later this spring for the fifth CD in Bilson's complete traversal of the Schubert Piano Sonatas for Hungaroton Classic. (Volume four has just been released with the Sonatas in A Major, D. 664; E Minor, D. 566; and A Minor, D. 845.) The program is rounded out with the Invitation to the Waltz by Carl Maria von Weber and the Rondo Capriccioso of Mendelssohn.
Bilson recently returned from Europe where he played Mozart concerti with the London Baroque Orchestra in Basel, Switzerland, and Concerto Köln in Salzburg. He will play again with Concerto Köln this August in Lincoln Center's Mostly Mozart Festival.
Bilson, the Frederick J. Whiten Professor of Music, is a leading figure in the move to restore the fortepiano to the concert stage. A 10-CD set of all the Beethoven Piano Sonatas featuring Bilson and six of his former students was released on the Claves label last September.
At Cornell, Bilson directs the keyboard studies in 18th Century Historical Performance Practice.
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