Pianist and musicologist Joyce Tang is joined by pianolist Rex Lawson to reveal the inside story of this fascinating instrument. Essentially a self-playing piano, containing a pneumatic or electro-mechanical mechanism, it operates the piano action via programmed music recorded on perforated paper or metallic rolls.

The programme includes performances from Carl Reinecke, Mendelssohn’s successor in Leipzig, and the first pianist ever to record anything; Busoni; and Cécile Chaminade, including her own performance of her famous piece Automne.

Running time: 1 hour

*****

ARTISTIC TEMPERAMENTS 
FRIDAY 17 – MONDAY 20 FEBRUARY 2023

Most of the piano music we love best, we’ve never heard as its composer heard it.

Turner Sims, in association with the University of Southampton Music Department, presents a new four-day festival. Join us for a journey back in time to when the first pianos and keyboard instruments were made – and tuned – very differently. The University’s stunning collection of antique instruments – and one of their fine modern grands – will be tuned historically. David Owen Norris and guests help us to rediscover the classics as they would have sounded to those that composed them.

DISCOVER MORE EVENTS IN THE FESTIVAL

Artistic Temperaments thanks Lucy Coad for the loan of perfectly restored eighteenth-century square pianos.