The Harp of David
I don’t remember how I stumbled upon this crazy story, but it contains things I love: a magical musical instrument, a crazy coincidence, and a wife named Hannah.
And…a bunch of it may be fake. :)
The Siena Pianoforte was built by the Marchiso family of Turin, a family of harpsichord builders.
There is a legend that it was built from the pillars of Solomons temple. As the story goes, after Jerusalem was destroyed by Titus, the Romans dragged back the two most beautiful pillars (Joachim and Boas) from Solomons's temple, and the pillars were used to build a pagan temple in Rome. The pagan temple collapsed, the foundation was then used for the building of a Christian church (the pillars were used in its construction). Then an earthquake knocked the church down, and the Marchiso family scavenged the pillars for the construction of the Siena piano. Far-fetched, but this is not impossible!
Ok, but that’s just the beginning!
The piano was given to one of the Marchiso’s granddaughters (Rebecca) for a wedding present in the first half of the 19th century when she married into a prosperous family in Siena. The family grew, with children and then grandchildren. Rebecca’s grandson Antonio who was an exceptional woodcarver decided to carve the case for his grandmother’s unique and beautiful sounding piano, with carved cherubs leading a drunken queen cherub, the faces of Mozart and Handel, and the Harp of David.
In 1867, the piano was sent to the Paris Exposition and was written about and admired along with other Siennese art.
A year later it was given as a wedding gift from Sienna to Crown Prince Umberto. In the late 1800’s Umberto, who had by then become King Umberto, attended a command concert in Jerusalem by the pianist Mattis Yanovsky (Mattis had emigrated from Kiev with his one remaining son, Abraham after his wife and all his other children save one were killed in a pogrom while he was in St. Petersburg performing a concert). Mattis apologized to the King for the quality of the instrument he played at the concert, and King Umberto gave him a standing invitation to perform on his very special piano, that Franz Liszt had himself played. This of course was the Siena Piano that was given to him as a wedding present.
King Umberto was assassinated before Mattis could visit and play the piano.
The story goes on to say that Mattis, on a visit to see his grandson Avner, told the story of the piano (which has taken on mythic proportions in his mind by this point), and Avner (who later becomes a piano technician) is charged with someday visiting the piano in his place.
Avner then tries to visit the piano and is arrested as a potential assassin. Then after many more crazy twists and turns, Avner winds up stumbling on the piano IN THE DESERT after World War II! Apparently the piano had been stolen by the Nazis and left encased in plaster in the desert (Avner states that in its plaster, the piano looks SATANIC!)
And then it’s brought back to his piano shop. He rebuilds the piano, which leads to the piano being played and recorded for the Esoteric Record Label.
It’s a long strange trip! See the links below for the whole crazy story! I went down this rabbit hole and I am currently reading Avner and his wife Hannahs’ account of this in their book called “The Immortal Piano”.
And, incredibly:
The story of Avner’s concert-pianist grandfather might all be a fake!
(See the Lowenthal part on the wikipedia page under the “Problems with the Legend” section”)
Oh, well. At least Avner really had a wife named Hannah…just like me!
I went out on Discogs and ordered a couple of records of recordings of the piano. Very beautiful and fun.
The Piano is very unique sounding. It sounds like a piano mixed with harpsichord and harp, and weirdly enough on one of the Scarlatti sonatas, on the lower and middle registers, the piano sounds like an oboe for a minute. Very weird.
I’ll keep reading up on what makes it so unique sounding but all I can find is the fact that the soundboard was “wafer thin” and that’s what may give it it’s unique sound.
The piano was written about in the Atlas Obscura, and I’ll post links to recordings and better history than I just threw together :) Thanks for indulging me!