For quite a few decades in the mid to late twentieth century, the backlash against the previous era of music, the Romantic era, caused the Purist movement within Classical Music to strive for their own notion of historical accuracy. One can understand that when reading reviews about excesses sometimes taken by musicians to force their own choices into great masterworks instead of aiming at the proper goal of Composer’s Intention. Nonetheless, for good reason artists like Virgil Fox, Leopold Stokowski, and Vladimir Horowitz held onto the best rules of interpretation that had developed in the nineteenth century. Such great artists took full advantage the newest and best changes in the construction of musical instruments to, if anything, make the original Composer’s Intention come across more strongly than had been possible with less advanced instruments of the past. Improvement of the technology was unavoidable if for no other reason than that musical instruments themselves were continuing to undergo evolution, and concert venues were often built to be larger, requiring instruments that were louder than their ancestors. The most dramatic and obvious addition to the world of musical instruments was the piano, something that today is the most seemingly standard instrument of all. By the early twentieth century the piano had grown up; it was no longer recognizably the same as the Fortepiano created in 1698 by Bartolomeo Cristofori, a simple replacement for the harpsichord to be used because (as its name tells us) the player had dynamic control at his fingertips. It was now the instrument that transcribers used most of all, especially those who were themselves composers, above all Franz Lizt. Suddenly one performer could, if talented and skilled enough, unleash a dynamic range of musical possibilities before possible only with a full orchestra. Eventually, and to this day, the standard of piano craftsmanship is the handmade Model “D” Steinway. The greatest European pianists have for well over a century preferred this American instrument to any other piano for the concert stage.
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