Today we mean by a Viennese grand piano an instrument with a "Prellzungenmechanik", formerly named German action. The rich Viennese pianoforte culture between 1790 and 1850 chose resolutely for this action, built in many variations and designs, not only in Vienna but also in all German countries and even in Italy.
As opposite, there was the "Stossmechanik", which was especially popular at the time of Beethoven in France, England, and therefore also in the USA.
The Viennese instruents offered a fine, sensible action with a large tone variety (because of the rotation of the hammers and the leather mufflers), a keyboard with a small key dip, and a rich sound with great capacity. The variable character of the different registers is typical as well.
The English instruments were robust and they were searching more for keynotes, they had a more uniform keyoard, a more comfortable action and a louder sound (at least if you stood nearby). They were the precedors of the grand pianos of our century, while the Viennese style dissappeared completely. In this aspect, you might even say that the Viennese grand piano was a totally different instrument from the actual grand piano, just like the clavichord and harpsichord.
How can we know which grand piano inspired Beethoven? We dispose of letters, compositions, instruments and testimonies. His about 2300 letters were published in the new commented edition of Henle-Verlag.
In a large number of famous and listed letters, Beethoven writes about pianofortes, and sometimes adds critiques about a certain instrument, but most of the time he describes them with satisfaction and even enthousiasm.
Nowhere do we find a sign of general dissatisfaction with the fortepiano of his time, which is believed more and more in the 20th century.
Names of builders that frequently turn up are Walter and Streicher. The well-preserved Walters and Streichers give indeed a good insight in the harmonical relation between the compositions and the instruments. Observing these instruments, we can also notice that Beethoven never prescribed something that's not possible. But it takes years of handling these instruments... and studying to know that.
Thirty years ago, the assumption that Beethoven had written the Moonlight Sonate (also the final) for a five-octave instrument was still greeted with yeers. The verdict was: 'impossible'. Today more and more pianists just do it.
Without foreknowledge a lot of passages in Beethoven's compositions seem surprising, because he likes to drive the dynamics and tessiture to extremes. In his works he frequently shows that the lowest tone, the F of the contra-octave, is a real challenge for him.
Czerny, his loyal pupil, tells us hundreds of details about how Beethoven wanted his works to be.
A very reliable description of the instruments of Beethoven's time can be found in "From piano to forte" written by Christo Lelie (1995, Kok Lyra, Kampen).

However, the instruments that Beethoven possessed, continue to cause confusion todau. We know that Beethoven possessed and played a few Viennese grand pianos, and still, people always remember the Paris Erard (1803, Linz resp. Vienna), the London Broadwood (1817, Budapest), and the Graf-piano (1825, Bonn, Beethovenhaus). These instruments have been preserved, and are mentioned over and over again, although they were never bought by Beethoven himself. The Erard and the Broadwood were "presents", with obvious commercial intentions, and the Graf was a lent instrument, especially meant to enable Beethoven to hear at least something using hearing aids, during the last two years of his life. In other words it was no artistic choice.
Without foreknowledge these three instruments put us on the wrong track.
Beethoven didn't like the Erard (with 'Strossmechanik'), and he asked Streicher to convert the instrument. This convertion is described in the article by Josef Mertin in the Beethoven Almanach from 1970: the keys were extended on the front side, the balance was put forward, the hammers were leathered according to the Viennese tradition, and the key dip was reduced from approx. 9mm to approx. 6,5 mm. By this conversion, the instrument was not only made more 'Viennese', it was also deprived of Erard's novelties.
Even then Beethoven still didn't like the instrument. He tried to sell it, and finally gave it away.
Which is understandable: the full chords in the bass, which he liked so much, don't sound transparant on the Erard, the ornamentations are difficult to perform, and the mufflers work less precisely than those in the Viennese system. Besides, the center pin of the hammer is fixed on the hammer rail, by which the rich sound expression of the Viennese grand piano can't be reached.
The broadway arrived at the moment that Beethoven's deafness was becoming dramatic (the mayor part of his keyboard compositions were already finished at that time), and because a Broadway sounds louder, the instrument may have satisfied him for a while.
Nevertheless he soon abandoned the grand piano. Anyway, by then Beethoven didn't perform any more and he increasingly focused on composing. Finally, the Graf has a minor role in this story, because Beethoven had already finished all his keyboard works when the instrument arrived. Beethoven's preference for grand pianos with a German/ Viennese action is undeniable, theoretically as well as practically.

When in 1993 Wolf Erichson, the producer of the Sony-Vivarte, asked me to record a dozen of cd's with music from Schubert and Beethoven (among which the 5 concerti), i could use my Walter-fascimile for the earlier works, but I didn't possess the appropriate instrument to play their later ones. As the recording would be combined with concerts, and the recording places were fixsed, it was impossible to work with histroical instruments in public museums. The first recording was planned for April 1996, so I only had two years left to find a solution.

Theoretically I had 4 possibilities:

A. Borrowing a fasciile from a privite possessor or a builder. I visited the available instruments and played them, but they were musically not fascinating enough to me, or they were technically inadequate. You may not forget that, while playing with an orchestera, a few parameters must be added, such as sufficient projection and volume, and tuning stability.

B. Ordering a new fascimile
The builders who are able to do this are very rare, and their delivery periods exceed two years. So that wasn't realistic either.

C. Borrowing a historical instrument from a private collector.
This is quite difficult, because most collectors (if they're known) are discreet and most of the time they'"re little disposed to lend their instruments.
Furthermore the question arises whether a 200 years-old instrument can still bear the transport and the recording. And it's not sure that the instrument, besides its documental value, still has its musical value after 200 years.
I Examined the collections that I knew, and I visited a few that I was not familiar with. Only one collector was willing to lend, but he only allowed the tuning of the instrument. Perhaps I could do the same thing as collector, but as performer I couldn't accept such a condition: how can you perform professionally if the instrument can't be adjusted nor intoned? So this possibility was eliminated, too.

D. acquired a historical instrument

But I was saved by a miracle...

Just at the time that i wanted to abandon the whole cd-project (it was 1995 already), Ted Diehl mentioned a 'Viennese grand piano' in perfect state, and in a piano shop: Andriessen in Haarlem! I took Ted seriously, because he has a large experience as a harpsichord-builder, and his description of the technical details was promising. And moreover, he described exactly the type that I was looking for.

In Haarlem I found a miracle: a Viennese grand piano, though built in Leipzig by Johann Nepomuk Tröndlin, a rather unknown builder (but one of the best of the German culture according to Hubert Henkel), with an intact soundboard, a not-twisted piece of furniture, an amazing action with a sublimely cut keyboard and fabulous bone ornamenting, and largely in the original state.
There was one problem though: it made a rather flat sound (like it's said in ordinary language: as if a mattress lay inside), especially in bass- and descant, and that's why he had been standing there for years. Andriessen even told me that one day three Japanese men with a fat creditcard and a round-trip ticket came to see the piano, turned around it for two hours, and finally left because they found it suspicious. I am most grateful to them, because they didn't see that the piano had wrong strings and that the renewed outside hammerleather would never give a rich sound.
Andriessen gave me time to consider and I could take the grand piano home for a few months.

I called the master-restorers Jan van den Hemel and Christopher Clarke in, and they confirmed the exceptional quality of the piano and recognized its capacity.
I was able to definitely acquire the instrument, and Jan van den Hemel could start a soft and delicate restoration (strings and hammerleather in a first phase, mufflers and tuning afterwards), and the piano grew and showed its true value.

The recording could proceed in April 96. During the recording a few weak points appeared, and they were definitely smoothed away with a lot of patience and experimentation.
Today this Tröndlin has become one of the most beautiful original Viennese grand pianos in the world. Besides, it bears all transports amazingly well (I must admit that the fabulous machine 'Klavierroller' also plays an important part in it), and it keeps his tuning better than all other Viennese pianos. The characteristics of this grand piano with its typical Viennese triple bent side can be described like this: purely talking and warmly singing, a bassoon-like bass, a clear height, a fabulous moderator, a perfect keyboard (at least for a historical instrument), and registers and mufflers that do not even let the smallest parasite through.
If Beethoven would play it, he would immediately write letter 2301.

Jos van Immerseel, Januari 1999

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