～Violin and Fortepiano: The Echoes of Haydn and Mozart (Noon)

Afternoon Session / Doors open 13:30, Concert begins 14:00

Venue: Japan Evangelical Lutheran Church, Okayama
(3-13 Hirose-cho, Kita-ku, Okayama City)

Musical instruments used:
Viennese-style fortepiano (manufactured by Toshiya Nojin, 2005)

Comments from the performers
The works of two leading musicians of the Viennese Classical School will be performed using instruments and replicas of instruments from the period.
Not only will we use instruments from the period, but we will also approach the interpretation and performance from the composer's point of view as much as possible, so that the audience can enjoy the lively sound of the works.

The term "fortepiano" is a name used to refer to historical pianos that are different from modern pianos. Here, we will refer to such fortepianos as pianos.

Inspired by the hammered dulcimer, an instrument that struck the strings with a bee to produce sound, an attempt to develop a hammered dulcimer with a keyboard was made by B. Cristofori in Italy around the end of the 17th century.
The greatest obstacle to the invention of the piano was a mechanism that would allow the hammers to return to their original position after striking the strings, even if the keys were left pressed, but this mechanism had already been perfected by Christofori in 1700. This mechanism by Christofori was later widely used in English pianos and is called the "English action," which is directly related to the modern piano.

The pianos that Haydn and Mozart would come to know are not Christofori's inventions, but pianos with a mechanism called the "Viennese action" developed in the middle of the 18th century by J. A. Stein, who had a workshop in Augsburg.
It is not known when Haydn first encountered this new instrument, but as for Mozart, he learned about the piano in 1777 at Stein's workshop and wrote to his father about it.

The piano to be used in this concert is a 5-octave range instrument with a Viennese action, built in 2005 by Toshiya Nogami, a keyboard instrument maker.
We hope that the audience will enjoy the sound that the composer heard through the performance by the fortepiano, which is not only different from modern pianos in size and range, but also completely different in volume and tone, and the violin with gut strings.