Mozart's Sound World: Meet Our New Fortepiano

What did piano at Mozart's time sound like? That's a complicated question, because around 1780, the piano was not yet standardized. Instrument makers experimented with a wide range of actions, materials, and sound ideals — and very different sound worlds coexisted at the same time. In this video, we introduce our new fortepiano: a copy of an instrument by Johann Andreas Stein (1783), after the original in the collection of the Grassi Museum, Leipzig, built by Gerard Tuinman. As a rare feature, this instrument is equipped with two historical actions, allowing us to explore contrasting sound worlds on a single piano. At Harmonia Stellarum Houston, we work with period instruments because music cannot be reduced to two-dimensional dots on a page. Playing an instrument is a conversation with the music — and when notation is reunited with sound, touch, and historical context, unexpected experiences begin to emerge, for performers and listeners alike. This video offers a glimpse into Mozart’s sound world — and into the way instruments themselves can teach us how music works.