Fortepiano

On occasion of the 1958 World Exhibition in Brussels, several Austrian firms were invited to present their newly designed products. Jürgen Felsenstein, at that time employed as a young architect in the office of Norbert Schlesinger, felt a strong affinity to the piano and to music, and he managed to persuade the firm Bösendorfer to realise a design for a piano that broke with accepted tradition in many aspects of its construction. At first glance one is struck by the unusual arrangement of the legs: the broader front of the instrument is not supported by the usual two legs on either side, but by a single leg with a Y-shaped fork in the centre. The most striking feature of the corpus is the main lid, which slopes away towards the back. Vertical elements of the body that are normally curved, such as descant side of the casing and the keyboard lid, have been designed by Felsenstein as flat surfaces. (rh)

Lit.: Rudolf Hopfner: Masterpieces from the Collection of Historic Musical Instruments. A Short Guide through the Kunsthistorisches Museum Vienna, Vol. 1, Vienna 2019