The Art of Building a Fortepiano — Paul McNulty and Viviana Sofronitsky Interview | Op. 5
Classical music from Mozart and Beethoven’s day was written for the fortepiano. Guests Paul McNulty and Viviana Sofronitsky build and test fortepiano replicas with painstaking detail. The result is a sound that makes classical music come alive in a new way for modern audiences.
In this episode, you’ll learn:
Why pianists should experience the fortepianos used by Classical and Romantic era composers
The philosophies surrounding fortepiano replicas
Why listening to the unique sound world of a fortepiano enhances the enjoyment of classical music
For the best experience, please watch the video at the top of the page.
Episode Transcript and Timestamps
DANIEL ADAM MALTZ: Grüß Sie from Divišov in the Czech Republic. Welcome to Classical Cake, the podcast where we discuss topics relating to Viennese classical music while enjoying one of Vienna's delicious cakes. I'm your host Daniel Adam Maltz.
Today, we are talking about modern fortepiano copies with my guests, Paul McNulty and Viviana Sofronitsky. Paul creates 18th and 19th century fortepiano copies based on the works of the most respected craftsmen of their eras. Paul is one of the foremost fortepiano builders and his instruments have appeared in numerous recordings and on the world's major concert stages. Viviana Sofronitsky is a fortepianist who has advocated for historical performance practice in concerts all around the world.
Paul, Viviana, thank you for joining me.
PAUL MCNULTY: Thank you.
VIVIANA SOFRONITSKY: Thank you.
Featured cake: Medovnik [1:00]
Medovnik. Image via Paneria Paul.
MALTZ: While we typically enjoy a cake from Vienna, my journey today brings me to the small Czech village of Divišov, where Paul has his workshop. Divišov is about 40 kilometers outside of Prague, so we will be enjoying one of Prague's famous honey cakes, Medovnik.
This is a multilayer honey and nut cake filled with a buttercream, not unlike dulce de leche.
So, let's dig in.
Working with wood [1:23]
MALTZ: Paul, I read an article where you said you started late working with wood building a bed at 25…
MCNULTY: Age 25. I had apprenticed somewhere earlier with a cabinetmaker in Baltimore making sort of plywood and plastic laminate things… very ugly work, but at least some exposure to tools and some inkling that maybe this was where my interest lay. Having graduated from piano tuning school, which was another story, I found myself in the employ of a fortepiano builder in Boston. And I had told him that I would work for $1 an hour knowing that he couldn't refuse.
And he didn’t. So I spent a year in that circumstance, which was at least, what's the word? It was a period of great enthusiasm for this kind of music – early music – in the 70s in Boston and stuff like this. And, my own enthusiastic introduction to this… to the piano history and the field of work.
You know, my exposure to some of these principles were, for example, by ordering a lute in 1980 from a respected builder. And he spoke of never using sandpaper but scraping everything to final finish. And then only using… it's a kind of reed which grows by the pond… it’s a dragon skin. And this was used as an abrasive, you know, in the 17th century. And that was his whole thing. He was big on process and historical method. And, it so happens that I just took it as gospel that, if I ever made an instrument, I couldn't use the sandpaper.
You know, you pick up a few precepts somehow. Not exactly anticipating making fortepianos for a living, but I was a lute player. I mean, what did I know? But I didn't forget about it. And those things were indeed more or less in practice in a place where I apprenticed with a fortepiano builder in Boston, Robert Smith. But when I left and finally found myself – by a long circuitous route – making fortepianos… While I waited in Amsterdam for my wood to dry, I read a book from cover-to-cover many, many times all called “Understanding Wood” and all the processes, the description, and the function of blades and their cutting geometry just all sort of got in my head and I found myself able, in fact, to build instruments without using sandpaper and to develop a way to scrape wood to a fine finish and hand plane surfaces and stuff like that.
That has put me in good stead to make similar appearing types of instruments which are recognizable in their fine details to a builder of the time. That's my wish.
Dedication to materials and research [4:29]
MALTZ: One of the things I'm really impressed about your work is your dedication to material and research and being authentic…
McNulty after Walter & Sohn 1805. Image via Paul McNulty Fortepianos.
MCNULTY: It is in so far as I understand it to be, and that's always the case. But, you can easily make up an agenda which has no basis in historical fact. And that was the only way to get by until, for example, in the year 2000. I opened a 5-octave Walter in my workshop here and then discovered what are the thicknesses in the soundboard and the thicknesses… profile of the ribs and all this stuff, and the selection of wood involved in the ribs – which are early growth and wide grain and stuff like this.
And those particulars are only available to the restorer or in the circumstance where the instrument is taken apart. And the sad fact of history is that the instrument drawn in 1979, a Walter piano in Nuremberg had some of its details put down, but not one iota of data on the thickness of the soundboard. And then years and years and years and years pass. Another Walter was opened in 1985 in Amsterdam and I asked the restorer a year later, ‘What were the soundboard thicknesses, Michael?’ He said ‘normal.’
So that was my data until the year 2000; meanwhile, I made 50 to 75 Walters guessing in the dark and that is a nightmare for a builder required to, you know, three months’ hence to make some kind of sound and to react to that and try to make another one, guessing in some other direction, which is just fruitless. But now I have the data for Walter. And, as it happens, I have similar data of some depths on soundboards of every instrument I make. Beyond that, I can't design, I just literally can only duplicate.
Building philosophy [6:45]
MALTZ: One thing I'm particularly interested in is what is your philosophy when building a copy? Do you try to make exact replicas based on research or do you make modifications to, for example, suit the sound world expected for modern audiences?
MCNULTY: No, you cannot design a piano to the architecture. That was Steinway and it was done once. And the architecture of 1870 is what we hear now. The Musikverein 1870, the Concertgebouw 1878 stuff like this. And those buildings gave Brahms to reply to a request for a European tour involving these new concert halls. He said, just make sure there’s an American Steinway if you want me to play in these places. And that distinction is on the basis of architecture, not music.
So I'm interested in the pursuit of the sound recognizable to a builder of this instrument who could walk by without noticing a difference.
McNulty after Stein 1788. Image via Paul McNulty Fortepianos.
SOFRONITSKY: The question was if maybe Paul can make an instrument, which is in his opinion or even in reality, better than this old instrument, but sort of the same kind. And, here, I think that this is an empty reason. There is no reason to do it because we should remember that the instrument is needed not by itself, but it only has any meaning in symbiosis with music, which was written for this instrument.
So we musicians are not really interested to have some beautiful instrument in the corner and I come and I press a key and the sound is so beautiful. But, I don't have pieces to play on this instrument. And, what I see from our customers is that they come to us and they are not saying, ‘Oh, this instrument is good I want to have this.’ They say, ‘Oh, I love Mozart, I want an instrument where Mozart will sound the best.’
And then they choose Walter or Stein, which Mozart was writing pieces for. Because when Mozart got this instrument, he tried it, he improvised, and he created the best music which could fit and sounded the most beautiful on these instruments. So if we play it on something else, then it will sound disadvantaged, as Anton Rubinstein was saying.
And the same thing, if we would right now make some different instrument which maybe had some very interesting characteristics in itself, but no music to play on this instrument… We would have to wait until some baby would be born and it would be new Mozart. He would write for this instrument and then this instrument would have meaning. Otherwise, it's an empty project.
The sound of replicas vs. originals [9:48]
MALTZ: Well, I think we hit on something there because I want to ask: Do you think that, for example, a copy of an 1805 Walter and Sohn fortepiano made today, by you, sounds like the same instrument when it was manufactured in 1805 or will there inevitably be a difference?
MCNULTY: Well, the question cannot be answered. But, it can be at least inferred from comparison to the best surviving Walter in London where one of my pianos stood next to this one and my piano was regarded as being the same, but plays better. But you know, the old piano has a funky keyboard. But that's not to say that I have the badge of authenticity. I'm happy about the comparison. The original instrument was not even maybe the best in the world or had the original leathers and blah, blah, blah. But it’s still old. So, it's an invalid comparison.
But the thing which confers some authenticity – like the ensemble use, and the orchestra use, and a comparison of the characteristics of instruments, which pianos that seemed to blossom and others which do not… But you cannot reassign its origin. You can't do what it isn’t there to do.
MALTZ: This brings up the point, which I think about quite a lot… Is that, inevitably, the instruments that the composers had access to would have had an effect on the music that they wrote.
MCNULTY: Oh, yeah. Their own musical imagination didn't just pop out of nowhere. When we speak of Haydn, Mozart, Schubert, these are profound geniuses who were capable of a miraculous exploration, and charming use, and tasteful use, and all this stuff. And, it is the idiomatic use of the instrument which is so charming with Schubert or any of these composers.
Testing and Feedback [12:00]
MALTZ: Viviana, you and your husband make quite the team. You're in the enviable position of the first to test the instruments. What type of feedback do you normally provide?
McNulty after Graf 1819. Image via Paul McNulty Fortepianos.
SOFRONITSKY: Not only saying exactly what I hear and for me what is important, not only sound, but what Mendelssohn actually was using this word in German: playability. It means that it's not only important how the piano sounds – like a sweet sound, dark sound, light sound, silvery, etc. But, also how you, as a player, can shape the sound and effects and express yourself. So, for me, it's much more important how I can rule this instrument. So then, of course, I want to have a perfect instrument. I am a concert performer and, for me, this is most important.
MALTZ: As I'm also well aware, behind the success of men is often a woman.
MCNULTY: The status of my production and effort since the year 2001, when Viviana came, everything sort of tripled. And, it coincided with the phone ringing and people ordering Pleyel pianos and Boisselot, and Streicher, and Graf. All that stuff is new for me since Viviana came.
And, the fact that I have had my team with me for 10-15 years. Really, they are at a stage of… not to say transition. They have arrived at a place where I trust them to work without my supervision. It's a revelation to me, of the arc of a career in which the transition to a proper workshop – which in Vienna was 10 guys working for Anton Walter and his having made in those first 10 years, 385 pianos… not alone. And so he fulfilled the prescription of a healthy workshop. And so did every other builder who made a name, they had 10 guys and they made, you know, three-and-a-half pianos per worker, per year, basically.
And now those terms are sort of a constant. But anyway, the end of this long sentence is that I had my 10 guys and we have a firm which is representative of the type of firm and the numbers of the time that I'm interested in – 18th century or late 19th century – with the addition of electricity and coffee. [Laughter]
Historical vs. modern practice [15:00]
MALTZ: When I was first introduced to historic instruments as a young student, it was presented in a way that seemed to say that this is an oddity and you shouldn't pay it much attention. So, historical music practice I think is sometimes looked down upon by modern piano performers and easily dismissed. Do you see a world in which historical performance becomes at equal footing with modern performance practice?
MCNULTY: As much as they may claim as a person who rather dismisses these early instruments, but yet claims to be in some sympathy with the composer – they're closing a door, which is unfortunate, that they shouldn't explore.
You know, there comes upon a musician a profound difference with this exposure and with some exploration into the taste and the practicalities. So how do you create a sound, you know?
These are big questions which are answered necessarily in a different way because the instrument is so wildly different to the Steinway people grew up on.
So to, as a matter of convenience, to dismiss a whole galaxy of the sound spectrum… And, in any other way that you can connect the validity of an instrument to its music is, I think maybe that idea is a bit out of date, you know?
MALTZ: Yeah, absolutely.
So thank you for joining me today.
MCNULTY: It's a very, very great pleasure to have you here.
MALTZ: Visiting your workshop has been an eye-opening experience. So, thank you.
For those of you interested in historic instruments you may have heard a McNulty without even realizing it. Paul’s are among the best in the world, and I can personally recommend playing on one.
Learn more at Paul McNulty Fortepianos.