Australian pianist Olivia Sham considers how Liszt’s instrument-crushing virtuosity drove innovation in 19th-century piano design.

When one thinks of period performance, Franz Liszt doesn’t usually spring to mind. Yet Liszt started out on Viennese fortepianos like those that Beethoven or Schubert played, and during his comparatively brief performance career – when he cemented a reputation as perhaps the greatest piano virtuoso – Liszt was performing on ‘early’ pianos. These instruments were quite unlike those he played later in life, which resemble more closely today’s grand pianos. In general, early pianos have a lighter touch, with a clarity that comes from being straight-strung. However, they also utilise diverse technologies to accommodate the divergent aesthetic aims of the time. Such a variety of actions and mechanisms make it useless to aim at recreating the same performance from one model to the next – both because of the pianist’s changed physical relationship with the instrument, and in the sonorities that emerge.

Liszt is known to have preferred the pianos of Sébastien Érard; the association between pianist and maker was synergetic. It was Liszt who put the piano centre-stage with the invention of the solo recital in 1839. His fame (‘Lisztomania’ swept Europe)...