Night and Dreams: An Evening of Schubert is the title of the next concert presented by Toronto’s Céleste Music. Schubert’s chamber music will be performed by Chloe Noelle Fedor (violin), Keiran Campbell (cello), and Andrea Botticelli (fortepiano) on May 9.
The first half of the program features solos and duos, and the second half offers Schubert’s Piano Trio No. 1 in B-flat Major, D. 898. All three musicians are active local performers both as soloists and a variety of other ensembles, including Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra.
The concert will represent the first public performance on a newly refurbished 19th century fortepiano built by Conrad Graf.
While all three are experienced musicians, it will be a first performance for them as an ensemble.
“It’s the first time we’re getting together as a trio,” says Céleste Music’s Andrea Botticelli. We spoke to her about the event.
Céleste Music’s Andrea Botticelli
“As a musician, playing historical instruments is a way of being closer to the sounds that a composer heard, or what they had in mind, when they composed the music,” explains Andrea Botticelli. It’s a simple premise, but one that doesn’t really enter into the way historical repertoire is typically either taught or performed today. “Many don’t realize that the music they’re playing was composed with very different instruments in mind.”
Botticelli began to learn about historical instruments as a student, and it changed her perspective. “When I was introduced to these instruments, it really opened up a world of sound.”
That’s not to say that Bach or Liszt might not have enjoyed the features of a modern piano. “Maybe they would have loved the instruments — or not,” she says.
But, undoubtedly, it would have changed the way they wrote. As she explains, the older pianoforte differs in varying ways. The tone varies to a greater degree according to the register. The higher notes on a pianoforte are somewhat thinner, more like woodwinds, with a richer middle register, and then a thinner voice in the bass notes. The sound is, in general, clearer.
“They just sound with a clarity that you just can’t get with an instrument with a warmer and a thicker tone,” she explains. “You have to make allowances on a modern instrument.”
Knowing the instrument adds to an understanding of the music written for it. “When you really start to explore them and delve into what the possibilities are musically, it’s really conducive to performance practices that we read about from the time.”
She cites a freer approach to rhythm, and a different perspective on musical gestures. The pianoforte does not lend itself to the long, romantic lines the modern ear is accustomed to — long lines the contemporary piano does particularly well.
Tones decay more quickly on the pianoforte, while it offers a greater variety of articulations.
“You go further and further down the rabbit hole,” Andrea says of the process of turning research into performance practice. While taking the music back to its roots, somewhat ironically, the result can be a refreshing a sense of vitality.
“It’s a way to relive it and revive it in surprising ways.”
The Conrad Graf fortepiano circa 1835
Conrad Graf (1782 to 1851), was a renowned Austrian-German piano maker. His instruments were valued and used by the luminaries of the day, including Beethoven, Chopin, Liszt, Robert and Clara Schumann, and Schubert himself.
Graf’s company made some 3,000 instruments. There was intense competition in the piano building industry during his lifetime, and new technology that changed the instrument.
The instrument, built in 1835, was discovered gathering dust in a castle in Hungary, and subsequently restored in the Netherlands. Such instruments are quite rare in North America, and it’s one of Céleste Music’s goals as a non-profit organization to assemble a unique collection of historical instruments in Canada.
Andrea and her husband purchased the instrument themselves.
“We purchased it from a restorer in the Netherlands,” she explains. That restorer was Edwin Beunk, who was internationally acclaimed for his work with early pianos. Andrea managed to secure the instrument just before he sold his large collection to a foundation.
“We actually found the provenance of the instrument after we purchased it.”
The instrument had been originally purchased by relatives of the von Metternich-family, known for artistic and cultural patronage as well as their involvement in Austrian politics. An Austrian princess in turn sold it to someone outside the family, and outside the aristocracy, and then it was finally purchased by Beunk for his collection.
“It’s a beautifully restored instrument with a gorgeous tone,” she says.
The pianoforte has four pedals: a damper, the una corda pedal that shifts to create a softer sound by activating a single string, a moderator, and a double moderator. The moderator pedal inserts a piece of felt between the hammer and strings to produce a muffled tone; the double moderator introduces two layers of felt to enhance the effect.
The concert will perform music which, in its original form, was intended to be played on such an instrument at home, in an intimate setting with listeners close by.
“That’s what we’re trying to recreate if possible.”
Céleste Music Concerts
It’s not only the instruments, of course, it’s the environment that completes a concert experience from both the performer and audience perspective.
In earlier seasons, Céleste concerts took place in a private home setting, a situation with inherent ups and downs. The audience was very close, there were livestream glitches, and other technical issues. The ensemble made up for it by talking to their audience directly about the instruments and the way they are played.
“It really turned into a very nice give and take with the audience.” It shaped their ideas about how to present the ensemble, even in larger spaces.
After a concert, audience members have a chance to ask questions directly of the musicians, and check out the instruments. “We want to feel like the audience can get to know us very well,” Andrea explains, “and why we feel what we’re doing speaks more expressively in some ways.”
The nature of the pianoforte and other historical instruments influences many details of the concert experience, including how to position the instruments vis a vis the audience so the latter is more included. It makes for a more intimate experience than the typical modern concert hall. “That definitely will come out in the repertoire,” she adds.
“We’re trying to think of how to involved the audience more,” she explains.
Launched earlier this year, a new initiative saw her reach out to other piano teachers to invite them to bring their students in to try out the historic instruments.
“We’ve had a lot of students come in,” she says. “It’s been a really wonderful experience to see their reactions.”
It’s part of the larger goal of not just performing, but creating a kind of collective of people with likeminded musical sensibilities.
“That’s what we’re trying to do, is to create more of a community.”
- Find more details and tickets to the May 9 performance in the Great Hall at St. Paul’s Bloor St. [HERE].
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