If you are buying privately always get the piano checked out by a technician. If the
casework looks bad the inside will not have been looked after. Avoid a piano that is
straight-strung and very dirty and dusty inside. Ask when the piano was last tuned and
avoid it if it was more than ten years ago.
You will pay more for a piano if you buy from a dealer but every piano will have been
renovated, reconditioned or rebuilt. Check to see that the piano is clean inside which will
indicate that work has been done on it.
A new piano will give you well over fifty years of use if it is looked after well. It will
tend to have a sleek modern styling and a durable polyester finish. A second hand piano
will be larger and may need reconditioning but may have a better tone than its modern
counterpart. Second hand pianos tend to have a lot more character and more interesting
casework than modern pianos. Avoid second hand pianos over eighty years old unless
they are reconditioned name pianos.
An overstrung piano is preferable to a straight strung piano. If you lift the top lid of the
piano you should see the tuning pins at the top of the piano. If the tuning pins are evenly
spaced along the pin block and the strings are all parallel and vertical then it is a straight
strung piano. If there is a group of tuning pins at the left and a separate group at the right
and the strings cross over in an X shape, then it is a cross strung piano.
QUASI-FAUST
In the 1830s Franz Liszt was living in Paris where he became a musical colleague and
friend of Charles-Valentin Alkan (and Frédéric Chopin and many other musicians).
Alkan’s Grande Sonate ‘Les Quatres Ages’ containing his ‘Quasi-Faust’ movement in D
sharp minor, was published in Paris in 1843. Liszt would have been able to acquire a
printed copy shortly after publication. Did he do this? Did Alkan mail Liszt a copy?
Liszt sketched the opening phrase of the slow movement of his Sonata in 1849, sketched
preliminary forms of motifs A and B in 1852 and worked intensively on his Sonata as a
whole in the same year. No sketch for his motif C (hammerblow) has yet turned up. A
prototype of it appears as the second motif of the first subject of Alkan’s Quasi-Faust
movement, Alkan’s repeated notes being D sharp and Liszt’s being D natural. Is this
why Liszt had no need to sketch motif C?
Liszt completed his Sonata in 1853 and it was published in 1854 by Breitkopf & Härtel,
Leipzig. After printed copies became available Liszt gave copies to a number of
prominent pianists and composers with whom he was friendly. (Chopin had died in
1849). Liszt’s correspondence suggests that he mailed a printed copy of his Sonata to
Karl Klindworth, and Clara Schumann’s diary note indicates that she received the copy
that Liszt mailed to Robert and Clara Schumann. Hans von Bülow’s memoirs state that
he received a copy in the mail from Liszt and we know from the extant copy inscribed by