The Case of the Missing Piano

Last Wednesday, I played the first of two Austen concerts that I'm performing in the UK. The recital was at Hatchlands, which is a National Trust property, and home to the Cobbe Collection of Keyboard Instruments with Composer Associations. After the recital, I had a great time trying out a few of the other instruments housed at Hatchlands, including Chopin's Pleyel piano. (See photo to the right!) The story behind how his instrument ended up in the Cobbe Collection is incredible!

Chopin brought his Pleyel to England in 1848, when he came to Britain for a series of concerts. He moved into an apartment in Mayfair where he kept both a borrowed Broadwood and Erard, as well as his Pleyel; Chopin wrote in a letter that he preferred his own instrument to the other two. Before returning to France, Chopin sold the instrument for 80 pounds to an acquaintance. After he died the following year, the piano was passed from one owner to the next, until its whereabouts were unknown. For almost 160 years, scholars assumed that the instrument had been lost. But a few years ago, Jean-Jacques Eigeldinger, a Chopin scholar, identified the serial number of Chopin's Pleyel by doing some detective work in the Pleyel archives. He soon traced the instrument to Alec Cobbe, whose collection of keyboard instruments is on display at Hatchlands. Cobbe had purchased the piano for 2000 pounds in 1988, not knowing that it had once belonged to Chopin.

You can read more about the story of Chopin's Pleyel here.

I had a terrific time playing Chopin's piano. The tone is incredibly warm and the varied palette of colors is striking. It's not difficult to understand why the composer favored this instrument.

My next concert isn't until July 24, so I'm enjoying some free time in London. Yesterday I went to the Wallace Collection, one of my all-time favorite museums, and looked at French eighteenth-century paintings by Boucher, Greuze, and Fragonard. Other items on the agenda include going to the RAF Museum, which I've always meant to do, taking trips out of town to York and Kent, and enjoying any good weather that comes our way by visiting every outdoor pub in town.