Anton Walter

• 1. Introduction

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  Anton Walter, born on the 5th of February 1752 in Neuhausen auf den Fildern, Germany, built instruments that would pass through the hands of Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, and Schubert. The Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians called him "the most famous Viennese piano maker of his time." What made his workshops worth visiting? What did his hands add to the piano that other makers had not thought of, and why are musicians still performing on copies of his instruments today?

• 2. A Craftsman in Vienna

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  By 1780, Walter had settled in Vienna, a fact recorded in the marriage register when he wed a widow named Anna Elisabeth Schöffstoss. His earliest surviving pianos date to that same year. The business grew steadily: by 1800 he was employing about 20 workmen, a workshop of considerable scale for the time. In 1790 the Imperial court recognized him with the title of Imperial Royal Chamber Organ Builder and Instrument Maker. His stepson Joseph Schöffstoss joined the firm in 1800, and after that the instruments carried the label "Anton Walter und Sohn" - "and son." The last surviving piano from the shop is dated 1825, and Walter died in Vienna the following year, aged 74.

• 3. The Viennese School

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  Walter's instruments belong to what historians call the Viennese school of piano design, a tradition that began with Johann Andreas Stein, who built pianos in Augsburg. In pianos built this way, the head of the hammer sits closer to the player than the hinge. The hammer rises when its short opposite end catches on a hook. Like all early pianos, instruments of this school were far lighter in construction than modern concert grands, and they produced a quite distinct sound; the broader category these instruments fall into is the fortepiano. Walter did not simply replicate Stein's design. He added what is called a back check to the action, a component that catches the hammer on its way back down, stopping it from bouncing repeatedly during fast playing. This single modification was adopted by other Viennese makers during Walter's lifetime, and it remains a standard feature of the modern piano. Scholars Palmieri and Palmieri noted that modern replicas of Stein pianos routinely include a back check even though the device was never historically part of Stein's own instruments - a mark of how thoroughly Walter's solution was absorbed into common practice.

• 4. Mozart's Walter

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  Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart bought a Walter piano in about 1782, and used it during one of the most consequential stretches of his working life: the composition and premieres of his mature piano concertos. In about 1800 - nine years after Mozart's death - the Walter firm itself apparently modified the instrument considerably. The type of hammer mechanism appears to have been changed. When Mozart owned the piano, it may also have had only hand-operated levers for the dampers rather than the knee levers used on later instruments; a Walter piano in Nuremberg dated to around 1790 uses hand-operated levers as well. The instrument survives today, held in Salzburg, though it had previously been in the possession of Mozart's son Carl in Milan. Because of the modifications made after Mozart's death, researchers cannot draw reliable conclusions from it about how Mozart himself played or what he expected the piano to do. A separate Walter instrument in Nuremberg, catalogued as inv. MIR 1098 and dated around 1790 by scholar Latcham, offers a less-altered window into the earlier design.

• 5. The Instruments That Survive

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  Surviving Walter pianos are scattered across Europe in museums, private collections, and historic sites. Two instruments dated to around 1782 rest in Austria and Salzburg. A piano from 1789 sits in the Musical Instrument Museum in Poznan, Poland, part of the National Museum collection. The Germanisches Nationalmuseum in Nuremberg holds a walnut-veneered Walter from around 1790 - the same museum also owns two additional Walter pianos and one by Walter and Son. A small portable square piano by Walter and Sohn, now in the Richard Burnett Collection formerly at Finchcocks in Tunbridge Wells, England, is unusual even by Walter's standards: each note has only one string, against the two or three strings most pianos used even then, and its range runs from C to f3. Kottick and Lucktenberg described its tone as having a "bell-like quality that never fails to charm." At the other end of the scale, a Walter and Sohn instrument from around 1810 in the Württembergisches Landesmuseum in Stuttgart spans six and a half octaves - an octave and a half wider than the standard range of Mozart's day - and is decorated with gilded caryatids, grillework, and brass medallions. The National Museum in Prague holds a six-pedal piano from roughly the 1820s-1830s period that Kottick and Lucktenberg called "an elegant and harmonious example of the finest piano making of the time."

• 6. Builders and Performers Today

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  Modern makers building fortepianos for historically informed performance have turned repeatedly to Walter's instruments as their models. Philip Belt, Chris Maene, Paul McNulty, Paul Poletti, and Rodney Regier are among the builders who have constructed replicas from Walter originals. Recordings made on these replicas and on surviving originals span a wide range of repertoire. Malcolm Bilson, conducting with John Eliot Gardiner and The English Baroque Soloists, recorded Mozart's Piano Concertos Nos. 20 and 21 on a Philip Belt replica of a Walter fortepiano for the Archiv Production label. Robert Levin recorded Mozart's Piano Concertos Nos. 15 and 26 with the Academy of Ancient Music and Christopher Hogwood playing Mozart's own Walter piano in its restored state. Paul Badura-Skoda recorded Mozart piano works on an Anton Walter 1790 fortepiano for the Gramola label, and also recorded the Piano Concertos K.271 and K.414 on a Paul McNulty replica. Viviana Sofronitsky recorded a complete eleven-disc set of Mozart works for keyboard and orchestra with the Warsaw Chamber Opera Orchestra using a McNulty replica, while Kristian Bezuidenhout used another McNulty replica for a volume of Mozart keyboard music. Andreas Staier brought Walter's reach beyond Mozart by recording Haydn sonatas and variations on a replica built by Christopher Clarke.