Pleyel
Pleyel was a French piano factory , in 1807 in Paris by Austrian composer Ignaz Josef Pleyel under the name Ignace Pleyel & Comp.ie was founded. After his death in 1831 his son Camille took over the work and led the factory to fame. At the end of 2013, the production of pianos was stopped after several geographical relocations of production. Until recently, Pleyel mainly carried four classic grand piano models from the P170 salon grand to the P280 concert grand as well as various designer grands . In October 2012, Pleyel presented a model in cooperation with the French Peugeot Design Lab . Special design features include a lid and base made of carbon, as well as an upward-beating pull mechanism below the keyboard. The brands are still for sale in the Pleyel Piano Showroom in Paris.
history
At the height of Romanticism , Marie and Camille Pleyel arranged famous “salons” . These “salons” were meeting places for Parisian musicians and music lovers, where composers performed their works and virtuosos showed their skills. One of them was Frédéric Chopin . Because Marie Moke-Pleyel (1811–1875), concert pianist and wife of Camille until 1835, was Chopin's first hostess in Paris. In 1832 Chopin played in the salons of the Pleyel company when he made his first appearance in Paris. Chopin preferred Pleyel's instruments, which were praised for their smooth action and their bright sound.
The Pleyel company was continued by Camilles' son-in-law from 1855: Auguste Wolff took over management of the company. From around 1875, the Pleyel company, in contrast to its larger competitor Érard , turned to the “American” system with bass crossover and one-piece cast plate in piano construction. In 1885 a 55,000 square meter new factory was built in Saint-Denis in the north of Paris. Gustave Lyon, the husband of Camille Pleyel's granddaughter and daughter of the Wolffs, took over management of the company in 1887. He was an engineer and a pioneer in acoustic architecture.
Towards the end of the 19th century, Pleyel was committed to the revival of the construction of historical keyboard instruments, in particular two-manual concert harpsichords. A model built for the Paris World Exhibition in 1889 , which combined the harpsichord mechanics with the achievements of contemporary piano construction, was recognized.
This type of construction found worldwide distribution when the Polish pianist and harpsichordist Wanda Landowska , who worked from France, developed her own harpsichord type together with Pleyel in 1912 and this instrument was subsequently built in series. The revival of harpsichord playing and construction in the 20th century is based on this collaboration between the piano maker and the interpreter. In the Haus Eller Museum in Bergheim -Ahe there is a two-manual Pleyel concert harpsichord with 16-foot registers, which was built for Wanda Landowska in 1927. This type of harpsichord was built only in a few copies and represents a late crowning achievement of the harpsichord construction. The instrument integrates knowledge from the construction of grand pianos and, like grand pianos, has a cast iron frame. It reproduces a design from the 17th century, has a complex arrangement of the strings and bridges in three levels and controls the pulls for the strings to be plucked by means of seven pedals.
In the same year 1927, the company created the new Salle Pleyel in the Rue du Faubourg Saint Honoré, a concert hall of the highest quality.
The Pleyel pianos have been manufactured in the Wilhelm Schimmel Pianofortefabrik in Braunschweig since 1972 . In 1996 a new Pleyel factory was built in Alès in the south of France , initially producing up to 1,700 instruments per year, including around 60 grand pianos. But soon sales and production sank; the factory was closed again in 2007.
Then the last 25 grand pianos were manufactured in a factory in Saint-Denis . The Pleyel factory in Saint-Denis closed at the end of 2013.
Historical classification of Pleyel's work
Pleyel was founded in 1807 (after the end of production at Ibach ) the oldest continuously producing piano manufacturing company in the world.
In their time around the middle of the 19th century, Pleyel's fortepiano, together with the products of its competitor Sébastien Érard, were among the top products in keyboard instrument making. Previously this was the case for harpsichords from the Antwerp Ruckers , for pianos from the Augsburg family Johann Andreas Stein and for the grand pianos from John Broadwood & Sons , then to the manufacturers Pleyel and Érard, and since the end of the 19th century to Steinway & Sons . Therefore, Pleyel grand pianos from the mid-19th century are among the icons of historical music performance practice and also among collectors.
They were the instruments of choice for Frédéric Chopin , which he often preferred to the instruments of Érard and Broadwood. There are still several Pleyel concert grand pianos that have been guaranteed to have been in Chopin's personal use (see the relevant section in the Frédéric Chopin article ). There is a saying from Chopin that if he feels comfortable, he prefers a Pleyel instrument with its complex, finely nuanced sound. If, on the other hand, he is not in a good mood, he prefers to play on an erard, because the grand piano's sound design leads to a good result more easily.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Une des dernières manufactures de pianos de France fermera ses portes fin 2013 - Article on the French television website of November 12, 2013, accessed on June 15, 2015.
- ↑ Piano maker Pleyel stops production ( page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. - on Abendblatt.de
- ↑ Classical Pianos ( Memento of the original from October 7, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. - on piano.pleyel.fr
- ↑ Pianos de designers ( Memento of the original from August 26, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. - on piano.pleyel.fr
- ↑ Peugeot goes under the piano makers - on heute.at
- ↑ Piano design Pleyel by Peugeot Design Lab ( Memento of the original from March 4, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. - on piano.pleyel.fr
- ↑ Pleyel / Peugeot Design Lab: Piano - on peugeotdesignlab.com
- ↑ Pleyel Piano Concept by Peugeot Design Lab - on carbodydesign.com
- ↑ The Pleyel Piano Showroom ( Memento of the original from March 4, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. - on piano.pleyel.fr
- ↑ Website on the history of important French piano makers , accessed on January 6, 2014.
- ↑ Michael Stallknecht: What a flute in the treble. The legendary French piano maker Pleyel ended production: a sign of change . In: Süddeutsche Zeitung of December 30, 2013, p. 9.
- ↑ http://www.francetvinfo.fr/la-derniere-manufacture-de-pianos-de-france-fermera-ses-portes-a-la-fin-de-l-annee_456750.html Article on the website of the French Television on November 12, 2013, accessed on November 14, 2013.
- ↑ Michael Stallknecht: What a flute in the treble. The legendary French piano maker Pleyel ended production: a sign of change . In: Süddeutsche Zeitung of December 30, 2013, p. 9.
- ↑ http://www.carbodydesign.com/2012/10/pleyel-piano-concept-by-peugeot-design-lab/
- ↑ Michael Stallknecht: What a flute in the treble. The legendary French piano maker Pleyel ended production: a sign of change . In: Süddeutsche Zeitung of December 30, 2013, p. 9.
Web links
- Company website (French)
- International Ignaz J. Pleyel Society - Ignaz Pleyel Museum in Austria
- Early documents and newspaper articles on Pleyel in the 20th century press kit of the ZBW - Leibniz Information Center for Economics .