Most Ornate Bechstein Grand Ever?

Here is quite possibly the most ornate Bechstein grand I've ever seen. Quite remarkable.



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The RCM Library has an important set of ledgers from the firm of Bechstein, and the Centre for Performance History holds four volumes of photographs of designs for pianos, both grand and upright. These were presumably given to potential customers, so that they could select the design that was most consonant with their interior decorations or musical tastes. The 'Rheingold' design was one of the visually most opulent and most expensive (at £1000) on offer. By the 1890s Wagner's music was all the rage in London, though it was often left to visiting German companies - such as the Hamburg Stadtoper in 1892, with Mahler as conductor - to give complete performances of the later music dramas.

Chopin Nocturnes - CD Review

A sticker on the cover notes that in this two-CD set "the greatest of all living Chopin interpreters records the composer's best-loved works for the first time". Greatest? Best? Two big claims, but completely justified. Pollini won the Chopin Piano Competition in Warsaw in 1960 and his stature has risen steadily since. Here are 19 titanic interpretations. My all-time favourite performances, by the late Artur Rubinstein, are almost unbearably poetic, mystical, and rarified, ravishing in tone, colour and shape. Pollini concedes little in either poetry or imagination, but is much more dramatic and grounded. He brings out the fire in Chopin's soul, yet every note is perfectly nuanced. These performances are the distillation of a lifetime's reflection and playing, and they are utterly worth the wait. For me, this is perhaps the CD of the year.

Back to School

Piano Shop owners all over the country breathed a huge sigh of relief last week when most of the nations kids went back to school leaving their parents with enough time to think about buying a piano. Let the games begin !!