The last piano on which Frederic Chopin played and composed in Paris is being renovated by a U.S. expert who is giving it back …
The last piano on which Frederic Chopin played and composed in Paris is being renovated by a U.S. expert who is giving it back its original mid-19th century characteristics. Paul McNulty is spending days at the Frederic Chopin Museum in Warsaw filling in some cracks in the soundboard and putting in wire strings like the ones used by Paris piano manufacturer Camille Pleyel — Chopin’s favorite — in 1848. “We’re very, very close to the character and the identity of this instrument when we put the correct strings on, everything else being in very good condition,” McNulty told The Associated Press on Thursday. Pleyel made the instrument, with serial number 14810, available to Chopin, already seriously ailing at the time, in the fall of 1848. After Chopin’s death in October 1849, the piano was bought by his Scottish student and friend, Jane Stirling, who then offered it to Chopin’s eldest sister, Ludwika Jedrzejewiczowa.
