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Waiting for the concert of 25 April 2014 at the Beethoven-Haus in Bonn

An important concert, a great honour, a point of arrival — or perhaps a point of departure toward even greater satisfactions for us and for our website.

On 25 April 2014, I, Armando Orlandi, Luigi Bellofatto, Marco Pescetto and Massimo Anfossi will be at the Beethoven-Haus in Bonn for a concert featuring, in its programme, the Fantasia for piano Biamonti 213, the Dressler Variations, and other fortepiano pieces dating from the Bonn period.
Luigi Bellofatto will be the speaker of the concert. His sober and profound musical culture is the perfect complement for this symposium.

Once the concert has taken place, we will add details, videos and audio, and we will not hesitate to thank Luigi and all the friends of the Beethoven-Haus who made all this possible, beginning with the director of the museum section, Michael Ladenburger, who — together with Luigi — promoted this exceptional event.

Conrad Graf

He began his career as a cabinetmaker, studying this noble craft in his native Riedlingen, in southern Germany. Having reached the status of journeyman in 1796, we find him in Vienna in 1798 or 1799. In 1800 he briefly joined a volunteer military unit, the Freikorps Jäger, and eventually became an apprentice to a piano maker named Jakob Schelkle, who worked in Währing, a suburb of Vienna.

When Schelkle died in 1804, Graf married his widow Katharina and took over the workshop. It is not known how Graf developed his method of piano construction. None of Schelkle’s pianos have survived, and Graf’s surviving instruments from that early period are not very different from his later ones.

In 1826, the growing demand for pianos led Graf to adopt mass‑production methods, of which he became a pioneer. He acquired the Mondscheinhaus, a ballroom at 102 auf der Wieden, and converted it into a piano factory, removing chandeliers and other furnishings. A report from 1835 indicates that the factory had 40 employees, “organised into eight divisions, each specialising in a particular task.” Between 1827 and 1831 Graf added further buildings, reaching a total of over 1,000 square metres.

He died on 18 March 1851 at the age of 69. By his will, part of his fortune was donated to charitable causes.

The Fortepiano

Probably around 1826, Graf lent Beethoven a fortepiano of six and a half octaves, also equipped with a device to channel the sound. After Beethoven’s death in 1827, Graf retrieved the instrument and sold it to the Wimer family of Vienna. The instrument has survived to this day and is on display at the Beethoven-Haus in Bonn.

The importance of this instrument in Beethoven’s compositional history is likely connected to his very last works: the late quartets, the sketches for the Quintet WoO 62, the four‑hand transcription of the Grosse Fuge…

The Programme

Biamonti 213. Piece for piano (Fantasia or Sonata), 1784–1800. Cited by Shedlock, M.T., October 1892, p. 591, and likewise by the Kafka Collection, which reports three fragments: a) Beginning b) Beginning of the coda c) Conclusion

For the general chronological determination see the Biamonti catalogue.

Biamonti dismisses this piece in a few lines, having only seen Shedlock’s publication. In reality, this — let us call it — Fantasia or Sonata in D minor consists of twenty‑eight minutes of unpublished music, and of excellent quality.

Thanks to Albert Willem Holsbergen (www.unheardbeethoven.org) we have a first reconstruction, including the third movement, released by Monument Records. The Italian label INEDITA (see image) re‑issues it, with pianist Massimo Anfossi’s interpretation, in a strictly philological version which, in my modest opinion, is the closest to the composer’s intentions.

The Pianist — Massimo Anfossi

He began studying the piano at a very young age under Maestro Pierre Louis Manfredi, later continuing at the “N. Paganini” Conservatory in Genoa under Maestro Giuseppe Bisio. After graduating with full marks, his concert activity — both as a soloist and in various chamber ensembles, especially in duo with cellist Giulio Glavina — led him to perform for major institutions and concert associations in Italy and abroad (London, Halesworth Arts Festival, Munich, Nicosia Cyprum, Teatro Carlo Felice in Genoa, Sala Puccini Conservatory in Milan, International Festival of Alghero, Unione Musicale di Torino, Settembre Musicale di Trieste, Teatro Romano di Aosta, Teatro La Fabbrica, Conservatory of Riva del Garda, Cervo, Milan, Florence, Perugia, Pescara, Trevi, Bolzano, Rome, Conservatory of Alessandria, Spoleto, Todi, etc.).

For his dedication and continuous research in piano pedagogy, he was invited to write an article on the “Treatment of functional disorders of the pianist’s hand” in collaboration with the Hand Surgery Centre of Savona, published in the official journal of the Italian Society of Hand Surgery.

He has several important recordings to his credit, including the complete piano works of Bruno Bettinelli (DUCALE); the piano and violin sonatas of Muzio Clementi (RIVOALTO); the complete chamber music of Francesco Cilea (AGORÀ); and rare piano works by Ludwig van Beethoven (INEDITA), recently reviewed with 5 stars by Rivista MUSICA. His sensitivity has also led him into other fields, such as jazz, recording Claude Bolling’s Suite for Cello and Jazz Piano Trio in collaboration with the Teatro Carlo Felice in Genoa (VIDEORADIO).

The Publication by Da Vinci Edition (2018)

This concert led to the 2018 printed edition of the Sonata, again edited by Massimo Anfossi. The Sonata Biamonti 213 (now Unv. 12) appears as the first volume of the series The Ultimate Beethoven Rarities Edition, which will see our website and our collaborators working side by side to make available to the public those works that are currently unpublished in the Supplemente zur GA and in the NGA.

As soon as the series expands with further volumes, a dedicated page will be created on the site. For now, a heartfelt thank‑you to Massimo and Edmondo Filippini, who strongly desired and believed in this project.

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