"So klingt Brahms" // Live-Vorführung des Tafelklaviers im Brahms-Museum

In the organizer's words:

Every 4th Saturday of the month, the beautifully restored square piano in the Brahms Museum of the Composers' Quarter can be heard for a quarter of an hour.

From February 1861 to September 1862, Johannes Brahms taught the young 12-year-old Minna Völckers on this square piano in Hamm near Hamburg. Brahms was commissioned by her father C.L. Völckers to choose an instrument. The 27-year-old was very familiar with the Hamburg piano factories, as he had already been able to practise in the magazines of renowned piano manufacturers as a piano pupil of Eduard Marxsen. He chose a high-quality upright piano from Baumgardten & Heins - with English reed action, simple release, a pedal to cancel the damping, representative scrollwork as a sound hole, fine rosewood veneer and ivory and ebony keys. Brahms was always impressed by the sophisticated mechanics of these instruments with their beautiful sound: "I don't think I have ever found such a singing sound." This table piano is unique in the world - ennobled by Brahms, who not only chose it, but also taught on it and played it frequently.

The instrument is melodious, velvety, melodic and has an intimate sound, typical of a bourgeois salon instrument of the time, and still inspires enthusiasm when heard today.

The demonstration is included in museum admission.

For reasons of space, there are only a limited number of places available; reservations are welcome at info@komponistenquartier.de or phone: 040-636 078 82.