Slavnostní Klavírní Recitál by Janáček, Dj. 21 Nov. 2019, De (2019/2019), Festival Janáček, Brno, Czech Republic

Janáček's newly restored Ehrbar piano will be presented for the first time at the concert, which underwent a demanding and fundamental restoration in the Viennese workshop of Gert Hecher in 2018. The concert is prepared in cooperation with the Moravian Regional Museum. The piano, which was very radically and not very happily repaired in the seventies of the 20th century, thus returned to its form from 1881, when the young Leoš Janáček received it as a wedding gift from his father-in-law Emilian Schulz. The instrument, which represented the best that piano builders had to offer in the second half, was a truly generous gift, if we consider its price of 1,000 zlotys, which was Janáček's annual income as a professor at a teachers' institute. Janáček was faithful to his instrument, and although this piano was made in 1876 - i.e. it had Viennese mechanics, the composer never bought a new piano with modern, i.e. English, mechanics. He composed most of his works on this instrument, not excluding an innumerable group of piano compositions. And on this very evening we will hear three of the composer's most important piano pieces,