Paul McNulty (piano maker)
Paul McNulty (born October 21, 1953 in Houston , Texas) is an American piano maker .
Live and act
In 1976 he began studying classical guitar at the Peabody Conservatory, discovered his interest in historical musical instruments and studied lute playing, among other things. In 1978 he went to the New England School of Stringed Keyboard Instrument Technology, where he studied with Bill Garlick and was trained as a piano tuner. At his final exam, McNulty received the highest degree awarded, “tuning examiner”.
He took a course in the Steinway factory in New York and could have started in the piano factory as a restorer and technician, but decided on a career as a fortepiano maker and completed a two-year training in this subject with Robert Smith in Somerville, Massachusetts ( UNITED STATES).
Paul McNulty's first fortepiano bought the Norwegian Academy of Music . The Austrian pianist Paul Badura-Skoda and Trevor Pinnock , who commissioned an instrument for his concert in Carnegie Hall, ordered further copies .
In 1986 John Gibbons invited Paul McNulty to accompany him on his European tour with Frans Brüggens' orchestra of the 18th century . Gibbons played the piano concertos K. 491 in C minor and K. 466 in D minor by Mozart . The highlight of the tour was the McNulty's fortepiano replica. In the same year McNulty moved to Amsterdam. At the Bruges EXPO in Belgium in 1989, his pianos received a lot of attention; further orders followed.
The search for the best materials eventually led Paul McNulty to the Czech Republic . Tradition has it that the piano maker Conrad Graf from Vienna at the time used wood from the Schwarzenberg Forest (now Sumava) in southern Bohemia for his soundboards. McNulty has lived in Divišov since 1995 . In 2004 he married the Russian-Canadian pianist Viviana Sofronitsky .
Paul McNulty has built 150 pianos since 1985, including for Malcolm Bilson , Mitsuko Uchida , the Conservatory in Amsterdam , the Royal Conservatory in The Hague , the Glyndebourne Festival , the Hanover University of Music , for Alice and Nikolaus Harnoncourt , Harvard University , the Royal College of Music and the Royal Academy of Music in London, the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis in Switzerland, the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki, Smith College in the USA, for the Chinese University of Hong Kong and for the Warsaw Mozart Festival.
Works
- Hammerklavier after Johann Andreas Stein , around 1788
- Fortepiano after Anton Walter from 1782
- Hammerklavier after Conrad Graf from 1819, op.318
- Hammerklavier after Ignaz Pleyel from 1830
- Fortepiano after Jean Louis Boisselot from 1846
- Concert grand after Pleyel from 1836 (original concert grand for Chopin, replica 2009)
- Concert grand after Boisselot # 2800 from 1846 (original grand for Franz Liszt for the Russia tour in 1847, replica 2011 for the Liszt Museum Weimar)
In 2009 Paul McNulty created the first modern replica of a French piano of the time, Chopin's favorite instrument. In 2011 Paul McNulty worked on a replica of Franz Liszt's Boisselot grand piano. The original instrument was made in 1846 for Liszt's tour through Russia in the following year and was subsequently used by Liszt in Weimar for decades for compositions, but is now in such a bad condition that it can no longer be made playable. For example, Paul McNulty was commissioned to rebuild the Boisselot grand piano as a replica.
Web links
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | McNulty, Paul |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | American piano maker |
| DATE OF BIRTH | October 21, 1953 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Houston , Texas |