Research and Restoration

One of the Foundation’s purposes concerns both the recovery of musical testimonies from past eras such as manuscripts and historical editions, phonographic recordings, fortepianos and pianos, as well as their restoration. Another area of activity focuses on the study of the functional and sound characteristics of historical instruments and the search for documentary elements that can shed light on the performance and interpretive practices on these instruments.

RESTORATION OF HISTORICAL INSTRUMENTS

Much has been debated in the last century, and continues to be debated, about the choice of criteria to follow in art restoration operations. Opinions remain often divergent in certain aspects, even if some general points, such as preliminary historical-philological investigation and material analysis, conservation of original elements, reversibility of interventions, and recognizability of reintegrations, are concordantly accepted.

RESTORATION OF A PANTALON PIANO

ANOTHER EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY PIANO

Pantalon is a word that is today as little known as it was widely used in the 18th century.

The origin of this curious term, which refers to a particular type of piano, is to be found in the name of the musician, very famous at the time, Pantalon Hebenstreit.

TANGENTENFLÜGEL PIANO RESTORATION

AN EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY PIANO

Throughout the 18th century, various attempts were made by musical instrument makers to equip the harpsichord with a mechanism that could strike the strings instead of plucking them. The spread of news about the invention by the Paduan harpsichord maker Bartolomeo Cristofori of a new type of harpsichord capable of producing “il piano e il forte” (soft and loud) by striking the strings with hammers certainly stimulated such research, as did the fame of the Pantalon, a kind of large psaltery struck by rods, which took its name from its inventor Pantalon Hebenstreit.

BOWITZ PIANO RESTORATION

The Carl Bowitz piano was donated to the Masiero and Centanin Music Foundation in 2005 by the Fontana brothers of Este.
Already belonging to the maternal grandfather of the Fontana brothers, Giona Vezzù, who had purchased it at the end of the 19th century in excellent condition, after the owner’s death it was no longer used and had various placements, some of which were completely unsuitable for its proper conservation.

LACHIN PIANO RESTORATION

The restoration of the piano in object was particularly challenging, especially due to its structural failures and the condition of the soundboard-ribs system.

SIEVERS 1845 PIANO RESTORATION

Giacomo Ferdinando Sievers, born in St. Petersburg in 1809, son of Carlo, a piano maker, received a complete academic education and simultaneously dedicated himself to music, studying violin, flute, and piano. Sent by his father to Riga to a piano factory to master the art of instrument construction, he returned after five years to St. Petersburg and later transferred to other factories in Germany and Italy, where in Naples he founded his own piano factory in 1838, which quickly became one of the most important of its time.