Frank and I hopped off our transatlantic flight Tuesday morning at 5:15 a.m.
But I can’t go to sleep without blogging this magical afternoon, an impromptu concert in Frank’s honor by Susanne von Laun on historic keyboard instruments, from a 1540 cembalo on up to a grand piano, at Hamburg’s Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe (Arts and Crafts).
These piano-ancestors are wonderfull quirky! Built-in sound effects included glass harmonica, “oboe” ( a spooky buzz when parchment touches the strings), a drum, and a tinkling bell. Susanne von Laun used just the right touch–and just the right music choices, from pre-Baroquerie to Chopin– to bring out the special features of each instrument. And Frank got to play them too, comparing the sounds and touches of different keyboards.
We’ve spent happy hours listening to Robert Greenberg explain the trajectory of piano inventions, by composers and keyboard builders, in between Haydn and Beethoven. So it was amazing to be able to hear this ourselves.
I forgot my own camera (drat!) but here are a Yale group’s photos of some of the instruments.
Many thanks to Susasnne von Laun, and to the generosity of the Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe, especially Dr. Bernhard Heitmann (curator of Medieval art) and Frederika Reuter (head of the Museum Friends organization) for making this magical afternoon a possibility.
And the two gingko trees? They continue their more-than-a-century of existence in a sunny courtyard created by huge museum wings now built up on all four sides of them. If you go to the cafe for tea and Apfeltorte, you can watch them existing through giant light-filled windows.