The rebirth of a rare musical instrument
And traces of its history
MúzeumCafé 16.
A Pleyel piano dating from 1898 is held in the Budapest Museum of Applied Arts. With the opening of the Chopin Year the public could see and hear it for the first time. The musical instrument collection of the Applied Arts Museum does not constitute an independent department but is part of the museum’s furniture collection. The aforementioned Pleyel stands out from among the instruments of the collection. Count Jan Zamoyski, a member of an old Polish aristocratic family whose members were enthusiastic supporters of Chopin, ordered the piano and was its first owner. The words written in pencil – probably by an employee of the Paris factory – on the lower wooden fame of the pull-out candle-holder tray at the right hand side of the music rest testify to that: ‘Comte Jean Zamoyski’. The account books of the Pleyel company show that the piano, with its production number of 118850, left the workshop on 27 June 1898 when Count Zamoyski purchased it. From there it was taken to his family mansion in Vöttau (in the Czech Republic). In 1912 the mansion’s contents were auctioned in Vienna and the piano was acquired by Prince August Saxe-Coburg, who later gave it as a present to Baron Hermann Groedel; thus it was taken to the Groedel family mansion in Budapest’s Lendvay Street. In 1957 Irén Groedel first deposited the piano with the Museum of Applied Arts, then in 1967 she bestowed it to the collection. Only a few of the gilded model were produced. Another instrument made at the time belongs to Hubert Martigny, the present owner of the Pleyel company, and stands in the ground-floor showroom of the Salle Pleyel in Paris. According to so-far unconfirmed information, one third of the pianos can be found in the royal collection of Buckingham Palace in London.