by Jim Tennyson
 
Have you read Thad Carhart’s  book The Piano Shop on the Left Bank?  He is an expatriate “American in Paris”,  a devoted amateur pianist whose passion is playing, and worshipping pianos and their makers.  His book is adoring to all things pianistic, but his chapter on the Fazioli Piano verges on the erotic. As a piano technician I had heard of the work of Paolo Fazioli: an Italian with a degree from the Conservatory Rossini and an engineering degree from the University of Rome, but it was Carhart’s book that made me yearn to play one.
The Fazioli was that rarity of rarities: a new instrument introduced to challenge the best of the best.   Now let me say, new pianos come on the market all the time, and the publicity material accompanying each one presents every new clunker as the instrument for which Beethoven would have yearned. But the Fazioli is different. For one thing, there have been only 600 instruments produced in the  16 years of the company’s operation.  I mean, Yamaha has that many instruments produced before lunch on Monday.  I’m exaggerating of course, but you catch my drift.
 
The star in Fazioli’s crown, as they term it, their largest concert grand, the model F308, is a whopping 308 cms – that is to say 10 feet 1¼ inches.  They are “hand made” meaning there are no mass production techniques used in the factory in Sacile situated 35 km north of Venice.  The soundboard is made from Red Spruce harvested in the Italian Alps. Fazioli points out that the rare wood from the Val di Fiemme was used by Antonio Stradivari in certain musical products of his own.  And like Stradivari, Fazioli’s goal was sublime sound:  “… to develop a piano with an alternative sound profile from existing instruments.”  
 
Speaking as a piano technician, I will admit that I was very curious indeed.  Until recently there were none in Toronto. Reports of Fazioli were given to me by artists who had played them and each  told me a different tale. Some thought the action (from the German Renner Company, though made to Fazioli’s specifications) was heavy, another felt the tone colour wasn’t quite uniform across the keyboard…. but all were incredibly impressed  by the  sheer beauty of the sound. Consequently, I was anxious to hear the debut of the Fazioli at the TSO’s recent Mozart Festival. (Also, to be wicked for a moment, to see the artists who would risk the wrath of Steinway to perform in public on a “ piano-shaped object” as Steinway likes to term the products of its competitors.)
 
You see, the piano business is in so many ways a hearty survivor from another era. It’s one of the reasona I adore it, in my role as a tuner, since I am rather an anachronism myself. In my piano world it might as well still be 1906 where the virtuoso Ignace Paderewski caused a furore by defecting from Steinway to the Weber Piano, or 1919 where Rachmaninoff was treated as a god from the musical heavens. Or even 1809 where Muzio Clementi  (coincidentally from Rome, like Paolo Fazioli) combined artistic and technical matters by performing,  composing music for pianoforte and manufacturing them as well. 
 
Steinway is still just as fussy about its artists and providing perks, but they will whisk them away if ones fraternizes with the enemy. A well known concert artist who will remain nameless for obvious reasons, told me recently that they had recently played a Fazioli  and adored it,  but when I teased about leaving the Steinway fold the artist in question turned wide eyes upon me and said “ I just couldn’t!”   But the temptation was there, all right.
 
So here we have the fascination of the Fazioli -  an instrument of definite merit, with mysterious and interesting features: a fourth pedal which allows the pianist to produce  ethereal pianissimo passages and rippling glissandi; and an extra   and unsounded bass string at the bottom of the keyboard.  As with all the best instruments, a mystique is forming and this is where it gets interesting, because the best instruments have always carried with them an aura which transcends mere wood, steel and felt, allowing the artist to feel connected to the instrument in an organic way. The mechanism, by whatever occult process, becomes an extension of their innermost selves. The greatest instruments enable their artists,  and this in turn amplifies the instrument’s  aura  of mystery and delight.
 
So in short, the January 13th and 15th concerts in the Toronto Symphony’s Mozart Festival had me quivering in anticipation. Not only would we get to hear the Fazioli concert grand, we would get to hear three of them.  Quite a logistical feat in itself: one came from Montreal, one from New York and a third from Italy along with, amazingly enough, Paolo Fazioli himself.  
 
Now when I say that the pianos were the concert grands, they were the  nine foot models, and not the F308. But the twinge of disappointment at the news of not getting to hear the F308 was certainly cured by the prospect of meeting the F308’s father, Paolo Fazioli himself, thanks to Robert Lowrey  the  Canadian  distributor of the Fazioli. This was like meeting a modern Muzio Clementi. I first saw Mr. Fazioli striding lightly across his  hotel lobby. He moves quickly and his mind, I found, works just as fast. He’s a man of medium height with salt and pepper hair who looks like  a professor of musicology. He talks like one too, with that captivating European charm which wears its deep sophistication lightly. And in profile he bears a slight resemblance to the photographs of  Gustav Mahler.  He adores music and musicians and the feeling seems to be very mutual.  Angela Hewitt’s utter delight at his appearance was evidence of that. “ Caro!!!” she squealed when he went back stage for a word before the concert.  
 
Now I may be romanticizing here when I make a correlation between the piano and the maker’s personality but I am going to do just that. Paolo Fazioli is a musician and composer who, as he told me, made his family happy by studying  engineering rather than becoming a professional musician, and then made himself happy when he began manufacturing pianos.  The result was an amalgamation of technology and art; each leavening the other, so while in each realm alone he is a consummate professional, the combination allows him to maintain overall the passion of an amateur.
 
And  I had to ask about that  Red Spruce from the Vale di Fiemme. “Are many piano manufacturers using it?”  I asked.
 
“They are now,…” was the reply, imitation being the sincerest form of flattery.
 
In regards to his pianos and his artists he has,  I may say, a paternal attitude to both. He loves those pianos. After Angela Hewitt played, on the 13th, I turned to him and said “ Do you feel like your child has made its Toronto debut?” “Yes I really do!” he said. And you could tell that, yes, he really did.  He was like a benign stage parent.  “Do you like the sound? What do you think of the sound?”  I told him I was very impressed. The piano carried very nicely in Roy Thomson Hall which is sadly not very kind to piano tone in general.  And Hewitt performed like a god.  She is a lyrical player and the piano  certainly helped that approach: the spare Mozartian texture sang through the hall. And Fazioli’s pianos certainly can sing.
 
On Saturday January 15, they had their night of glory. I arrived  early, as did Robert Lowrey: Paolo Fazioli wasn’t the only stage father on  site. 
 
The programming was clever:  three overtures; three pianos; three soloists; three concerti: No. 9       (K.271)  the Jeunehomme from 1777, played by André Laplante; No. 10 for  Two Pianos (K.365), with Angela Hewitt and Louis Lortie; and finally No. 7 the London, for Three Fazioli (K.242) and the three soloists. ...
 
You’ll have to forgive me if what follows is more adoring than critical. When, after all,  do we get to see three soloists of the highest rank  in performances that were, in short, sublime?  Peter Oundjian was  dancing with delight by the end of  the concert. And the smooching on that stage entre les  quatre could serve quite effectively as a review of the whole evening.
 
Louis Lortie and Angela Hewitt, who has a consummate stage presence, provided a virtually seamless conversation of instruments, particularly in the slow movement of both multi-piano works. They played as with one mind, and the sonority and elegance of their performance was breathtaking. It was a sophisticated, noble and broadly conceived reading. The architecture of the concerti shone through:  players often get bogged down by lavishing too much attention on the “pretty bits”. In this performance we never lost sight of the “cathedrals of the mind”  that Mozart constructs in his music.
 
And Oundjian and his band?  May I go on record as stating that   the “Oundjian sound”  is beginning to emerge from that orchestra: precision of attack and an especially rich sonority in the lower strings helped by, but certainly not limited to,  Joel Quarrington as principal bass. Oundjian is at his finest as an accompanist - he was a chamber musician, remember, and his support for the soloists was  extraordinary.
 
As for the pianos, the bell-like clarity of the upper tenor and lower treble ranges sang (there’s that word again) through the hall. Having listened to piano concerti in RTH where I thought I had inadvertently stuffed cotton in my ears, the experience of a ravishing  piano tone filling that vast space gave me goose bumps. Okay, so   it’s a piano technician thing, but you understand what I am saying.
 
At intermission I kept hearing snatches of converstions  where the words  “ Fazioli Piano!”  caught my ear. I admit that I’d wondered if three modern concert grands in Mozart would be like driving  a Hummer  down the shortcut to the roses. But it was remarkable to hear: powerful piano tone that at the same time had  the clarity to not overwhelm the music or, in the three piano work,  the orchestra.
 
At the conclusion there was a standing ovation.  And I still think they should have brought Paolo Fazioli on stage but, come to think of it, in a special way perhaps he had been there all evening.

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