Composers with Disabilities, Part 2 Pettersson, Chopin, Joyce, Beethoven

 

by Emily E. Hogstad  September 9th, 2026

In Part 1 of this series, we looked at four composers who lived and worked with significant disabilities.

Here are four more – spanning three centuries and five countries, with disabilities ranging from chronic pain to hearing loss to impacts from injuries sustained in childhood.

Allan Pettersson

Rheumatoid arthritis

Allan Pettersson

Allan Pettersson was born in 1911 to an alcoholic blacksmith and his dressmaker-and-singer wife.

Against his father’s wishes, he began teaching himself the violin at age 10. In 1930, he enrolled at the Royal Swedish Academy of Music to continue his studies.

The viola would eventually become his favoured instrument, and in the 1940s, he began working as a violist in the Stockholm Concert Society Orchestra, later the Stockholm Philharmonic.

Pettersson has been described as a “combative loner”; he was once scolded by visiting conductor Willem Mengelberg for refusing to blend with his section.

His interest in being an orchestral musician eventually faded, and he began focusing on composition instead, writing multiple symphonies.

His seventh symphony, premiered in 1968, was a breakthrough, becoming a huge success in Sweden.  

In the early 1950s, his chronic pain was diagnosed as rheumatoid arthritis.

At the time, there were limited effective treatments, and his physical condition deteriorated throughout the 1950s.

He kept composing, but by the early 1960s, his mobility was severely curtailed. His apartment was on the fourth floor of a building without an elevator, leaving him essentially homebound for years.

In 1970, he was hospitalised for nine months with kidney issues.

Still, he continued composing as his health deteriorated. When he died of cancer in 1980, he was working on his seventeenth symphony.

Frédéric Chopin

Tuberculosis

Maria Wodzińska: Frédéric Chopin, 1836 (Wasaw: National Museum)

After Chopin moved from his native Poland to Paris in 1831, his health deteriorated, and he began coughing up blood: classic symptoms of a dreaded tuberculosis infection.

A few years later, he came down with laryngitis and bronchitis, too. He got so ill that rumours of his death began circulating.

Even after he recovered from the acute infections, he continued to endure intense and exhausting coughing spells.  

In Chopin’s day, tuberculosis was often treated by bloodletting (the process of draining blood from the body) and colon cleansing. These treatments did not provide lasting relief, if any.

With the lack of treatment options available to him, Chopin turned to belladonna and opium for relief. We wrote about his relationship with opium and how it may have affected his music-making here: https://interlude.hk/piano-opium-eater/.

Throughout his thirties, his condition deteriorated steadily. During a tour of Scotland and England in 1848, he made out his will, acutely aware that his days were limited.

He died the following year in Paris.

Molly Joyce

Injuries from a car accident

Molly Joyce

American composer Molly Joyce was a seven-year-old violinist when she was in a car accident. Her left hand was almost completely severed from her body.

She would go on to study at the Juilliard School, the Royal Conservatory in The Hague, and the Yale School of Music.  

In a 2022 interview, she told contemporary art music blogger Sandris Murins:

“I identify as disabled because of a car accident that happened a little more than 20 years ago, when my left hand was nearly amputated. Since the accident, I have been on a journey of acceptance… I have had to come a long way, while unfolding my disability, and it has paralleled the progression of my artistic practice.”

Due to her own experiences, Joyce has become increasingly interested in prioritising the experiences of audience members with disabilities. For instance, she provides sign language interpretation and audio descriptions for people who have reduced vision or hearing.

She also works with other artists who have disabilities, such as dancer Jerron Herman, who has cerebral palsy.

According to her official biography, her primary instrument is “her electric vintage toy organ, an instrument she bought on eBay that suits her body and engages her disability on a compositional and performative level.”

Ludwig van Beethoven

Deafness, alcoholism, depression, liver issues, possible lead poisoning

Christian Honeman: Ludwig van Beethoven, 1803 (Beethovenhaus Bonn)

Beethoven dealt with many more health issues than his well-known hearing loss, tinnitus, and depression.

For one, he had severe and lifelong gastrointestinal problems.

These symptoms first began appearing after his beloved mother died when he was just sixteen, leaving his violent and alcoholic father as his only parental figure. During flares of stress or grief, his abdominal pain and digestive problems would often worsen.

In 1821, six years before his death, he also began showing signs of liver disease, including jaundice, vomiting, and more abdominal pain. One contributor was likely his alcohol consumption.

Based on what historians know, it is commonly accepted that his final cause of death was actually liver failure.  

Modern research has unearthed additional information about Beethoven’s health and disabilities.

For instance, a clipping of Beethoven’s hair was recently tested for heavy metals at the Mayo Clinic.

NPR reported in May 2024 that the lead level in the hair was “64 to 95 times higher than the hair of someone today.”

Paul Jannetto, director of the lab, told NPR he believes this was “likely” due to “the goblets and glasses [Beethoven] drank out of.”

Lead poisoning alone likely wouldn’t have killed Beethoven, but it can worsen liver disease, GI issues – and, yes, hearing loss.

We’ll never know exactly what disabilities Beethoven would be diagnosed with had he lived today – but it would certainly be more than deafness and depression.

Conclusion

Pettersson composed from a fourth-floor apartment he could barely leave. Chopin made out his will on tour, knowing he was dying. Joyce’s art expanded once she came to terms with her disability. Beethoven wrote some of the most celebrated music in the Western canon while going deaf, poisoned by his own cups, and battling organ failure.

Disability is woven into the history of classical music – and these four great composers are just a small part of that larger story.

The History of the Piano: Cristofori, Silbermann, and the First Pianos

 

by Emily E. Hogstad  September 12th, 2026

The piano was invented at the turn of the eighteenth century by a craftsman from Padua, Italy, named Bartolomeo Cristofori.

Decades later, German instrument builder Gottfried Silbermann picked up where Cristofori left off – refining the design, championing the instrument to the courts of Europe, and bringing it to the attention of composers who would shape its future.

Six of their instruments have survived the centuries. Each one tells a chapter of the same remarkable story.

Who Invented the Piano?

Bartolomeo Cristofori

Bartolomeo Cristofori was born in 1655.

We know nothing about his early life, but in 1688, at the age of 33, he was hired by royal patron of the arts Prince Ferdinando de Medici.

The prince’s previous keyboard technician had just died, and he was looking for an employee to handle repairs, tuning, and maintenance.

In May of 1688, just a few weeks after having been recruited, Cristofori dropped everything and moved to the prince’s home in Florence.

What Made the First Pianos Different?

Sometime around 1700, Cristofori invented a new instrument. It had the ungainly name of “gravicembalo col piano, e forte”, or “harpsichord with soft and loud.” It would later be called the pianoforte, and later just shortened to “piano.”

Pianofortes were different from harpsichords in one very important way: harpsichords pluck their strings, while fortepianos use hammers that strike a string.

A player could now create gradations of volume using the hammer system that were not possible using the plucked mechanism. The result is a very different tone, and the change opened up entirely new creative worlds for composers.

However, the instruments weren’t the same ones we’d recognise today.

As evidenced by a surviving 1720 model, the keyboard had only 54 keys, compared with the modern piano’s 88.

These early pianos were also much quieter than instruments we see today, which have been continually optimised over generations for larger and larger concert halls – and bigger, louder, more technically demanding repertoire.

The Three Earliest Surviving Cristofori Pianos

Cristofori piano

The earliest surviving examples of Cristofori’s work date to the 1720s.

There are three that have survived the centuries: a 1720 model now at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, a 1722 model at the Museo Strumenti Musicali in Rome, and a 1726 model at the Musikinstrumenten-Museum of Leipzig University.  

This instrument is fascinating to listen to today, knowing how the piano – and piano literature – would ultimately develop. The piano may not have reached its final form, but the bones were there.

The Rise of German Piano Builder Gottfried Silbermann

Gottfried Silbermann

In 1683, instrument builder Gottfried Silbermann was born in modern-day Saxony to a carpenter and his wife – far removed from the glamorous world of the Medicis.

He opened a workshop in 1711. Initially his speciality was organ building.

In 1723, Silbermann was named the “Honorary Court and State Organ Builder to the King of Poland and Elector of Saxony.”

Silbermann never studied under Cristofori directly, but he did read analysis of Cristofori’s work. Remarkably, in 1732, when he built his first pianoforte, he’d likely never seen an example before in the flesh. (Cristofori had died just a year prior.)

Over the course of his career, Silbermann built on Cristofori’s ideas, including developing the idea of the damper pedal.

It is worth noting that Silbermann had a famous organist friend: one Johann Sebastian Bach. In fact, they were close enough that Silbermann stood as godfather to Bach’s son, Carl Philipp Emmanuel (known as C.P.E. Bach).

As legend has it, Bach was intrigued by the early Silbermann pianos, but was sceptical. His two big critiques were that the action was too heavy and the treble was too weak.

The Influence of the Silbermann Instruments

In the 1740s, King Frederick the Great of Prussia – a famously musical monarch – became acquainted with Silbermann’s invention and purchased several examples for his court.

Silbermann’s godson, C. P. E. Bach, worked for Frederick the Great, meaning that he came in contact with these new instruments and worked extensively with them.  

The Silbermann pianos would have influenced C.P.E. Bach – and he in turn influenced later composers.

By the mid-eighteenth century, it was becoming increasingly clear that the idea of the piano had legs.

Today, two of Silbermann’s 1740s pianos reside in Frederick’s palaces in Potsdam, and a third is part of the collection of the Germanisches Nationalmuseum in Nuremberg.

They – and the copies made of them – are vital historical documents tracing the evolution of the harpsichord into the piano we know and love today.

Conclusion

These six pianos by these two makers, scattered across Europe and America, tell a vitally important music history story: how the initial piano prototype of the 1720s evolved within a single generation into the instrument favoured by the generation of Bach’s children – paving the way for giants like Haydn, Beethoven, and their contemporaries to push the instrument to new heights.

Johann Sebastian Bach’s Grandson: The Last Composer of the Bach Dynasty

by Emily E. Hogstad  September 10th, 2026

It’s well known that Johann Sebastian Bach had 20 children. Several of his sons became accomplished composers in their own right.

But what about the next generation?

Wilhelm Friedrich Ernst Bach (1759–1845) was the grandson of Johann Sebastian – and the last member of the family to pursue composition professionally.

Today we’re taking a look at his life, his career, and five of his most interesting works.

Wilhelm Friedrich Ernst Bach’s Background and Training

Wilhelm Friedrich Ernst Bach

Wilhelm Friedrich Ernst Bach was born on 24 May 1759.

He was the son of composer Johann Christoph Friedrich Bach (the fifth son of Johann Sebastian Bach) and his wife, singer Lucia Elisabeth Münchhausen. We wrote about their marriage here: https://interlude.hk/christoph-friedrich-bach-and-lucia-elisabeth-munchausen/.

Johann Christoph Friedrich Bach

Wilhelm was one of eight children, only half of whom survived infancy. He was the only boy to live to adulthood, and therefore the only one who pursued music professionally.

His music education began under his father. Later he went to Hamburg to study with an uncle, Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, usually referred to as C.P.E. Bach.

In 1778, when he was nineteen, he and his father went to London to visit yet another uncle, Johann Christian Bach, whom Wilhelm studied with until Johann Christian died in 1782.

He may have been the only person ever to study with three of Johann Sebastian’s sons.

Wilhelm Friedrich Ernst Bach’s Career

After Johann Christian Bach’s death, Wilhelm returned to the Continent, embarking on a concert tour in the Netherlands and France.

In 1786, he was named the Kapellmeister in Minden, Germany, a small town a hundred miles south of Hamburg.

King Friedrich Wilhelm II

The following year, his life and career took a turn when King Friedrich Wilhelm II of Prussia visited Minden.

The king was impressed by a work of Wilhelm’s that he heard during his trip, and hired Bach as Kapellmeister for his own court.

In 1788, Wilhelm Friedrich Ernst Bach became Kapellmeister in Berlin, a position he held for over twenty years. Part of his duties included teaching music to Prussian princes.

He married twice. In 1798, he married a woman named Charlotte Elerdt. She had two daughters, Caroline and Juliane, before dying young in 1801.

He remarried a woman named Wilhelmine the following year and had two more children: Auguste and Friederike.

Of the four children, only Caroline and Auguste survived past childhood.

Caroline lived until 1871, becoming the last surviving direct descendant of Johann Sebastian Bach.

Wilhelm Friedrich Ernst Bach’s Retirement

In 1811, at the age of fifty-two, Wilhelm retired from his Kapellmeister duties after the Prussian royal family granted him a pension. He continued living in Berlin, where he appeared as a pianist and composer.

He reappeared in music history in 1843, when he travelled to Leipzig, where a monument to Johann Sebastian Bach was being dedicated.

While there, he met a young Robert Schumann, who described him as “a very old, agile gentleman of 84 years old with snow-white hair and expressive features.”

He also corresponded with Felix Mendelssohn, who, with the help of his Bach-loving family, had done much advocacy for Johann Sebastian Bach’s music.

Wilhelm died a few years later, in 1845.

He was open-eyed about his legacy, acknowledging the discrepancy in talent between himself and his grandfather, and is remembered for his wry remark, “Heredity can tend to run out of ideas.”

Today we’re looking at five of Wilhelm Friedrich Ernst Bach’s works.

Symphony No. 2 in G major  

This is a slender, spirited three-movement symphony.

The outer movements are sparkly and mischievous, with a serene, noble slow movement that prominently features horn calls reminiscent of genteel hunting horns.

Sestetto Concertante  

This is an elegant work for clarinet, two horns, violin, viola, and cello, written around 1800.

The varied, unconventional instrumentation would have helped it to carry in a large aristocratic space, and it is easy to imagine it as background music for a charming, gossipy, candlelit event.

Westphalens Freude  

“Westphalens Freude” (“Westphalens Joy” or “Triumph! Triumph Westphalia!”) was a cantata published in 1791, composed for orchestra, chorus, and vocal soloists.

This is the work celebrating King Friedrich Wilhelm that so impressed the monarch that he invited Bach to work in Berlin.

Toccata  

Just like his famous grandfather, Wilhelm wrote works for solo organ.

Although this Toccata may not be as forcefully virtuosic as Johann Sebastian’s, it is pleasantly triumphant and explores a range of the instrument’s timbres.

Das Dreyblatt  

This is an unusual (to put it mildly) work written for one keyboard, three players, and six hands.

The centre player is to be a large man, and the ones on the sides are to be petite women.

In an era when playing piano duets was one of the few socially acceptable times for unmarried men and women to be physically close, this piece takes the sexual subtext of the genre and makes it quite explicit!

Conclusion

Wilhelm Friedrich Ernst Bach may not have matched his grandfather’s towering genius – as he himself cheerfully admitted.

But his long life gave him a unique vantage point on musical history, bridging the world of Johann Sebastian Bach and the early Romantic era of Schumann and Mendelssohn.

If you’d like to explore more of the Bach family tree, we’ve written more about it here: https://interlude.hk/the-bach-family-eight-fascinating-relatives-of-johann-sebastian/.

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6 Violin-Like Instruments From Around the World

by Emily E. Hogstad  September 5th, 2026

The violin is one of the most recognisable instruments in the world – but it is far from the only instrument of its kind.

Across cultures and centuries, musicians have developed bowed string instruments that share the violin’s basic logic: strings, a resonating body, and a bow.

Some of these instruments predate the violin; others were built to solve problems the violin couldn’t. All of them are worth knowing.

Here are six violin-like instruments from around the world.

Stroh Violin  

The Stroh violin was invented by electrical engineer Johannes Matthias Augustus Stroh in 1899.

Unlike a traditional violin, it replaces the wooden body with a metal diaphragm and attached horn, which amplify the sound and project it outward.

Stroh violin or Horn-violin

This made it perfect for the early recording era, when it was difficult for recording equipment to capture the sound of acoustic string instruments.

However, it was more expensive to manufacture than a traditional violin, and once recording technology advanced, the instrument became obsolete.

The Stroh violin is largely forgotten today, but is still admired as a historical curiosity.

Electric Violin   

Electric violins are violins equipped with an electronic pickup that transmits sound to an amplifier.

The pickup is attached to the bridge, body, or fingerboard.

Electric violins don’t need to hew to traditional designs, and many don’t. It’s common to see instruments with five or more strings, frets, or carbon fibre bodies – enough differences to differentiate the electric violin as a separate instrument from its acoustic counterpart.

A traditional acoustic violin and a modern electronic violin from Marc Capuano

The electric violin’s roots stretch back to the 1920s. Jazz violinist Stuff Smith (1909-1967) was among the first to bring the electric violin to prominence. By the 1930s, they were being sold commercially.

Apache Fiddle  

The Apache are indigenous people native to the southwestern United States.

One of their musical instruments is called the “tsii’ edo’a’tl”, which, translated literally, means “wood that sings.” However, it is better known in English as the Apache fiddle.

Arizona Apache fiddle, from the Musical Instrument Museum – Phoenix, Arizona

The Apache fiddle is made from the stem of a thick-stalked plant, such as agave.

One or two strands of natural material – such as horsehair – serve as strings. The player stops the strings with their fingers and draws a bow across them.

To create more friction between the string and the bow, the player might apply sticky pine pitch onto the bow – similar to how rosin is used for violin bows.

Historically, the instrument is known for its role in Apache courtship rituals.

Pochette   

We wrote a whole article on the pochette here: https://interlude.hk/the-violin-in-your-pocket/

Pochettes (French for “pockets”) were miniature violin-like instruments that first appeared in the 1400s. They were favoured by dancing masters due to their portability.

Decorated pochette

The instrument is played tucked onto the player’s chest.

The pochette is usually tuned one octave above a violin’s range, and its sound is shriller. Its range is also notably smaller; in fact, a player can’t shift above third or fifth position without running out of string to stop.

Erhu   

An erhu is an ancient two-stringed Chinese instrument. Its predecessor instruments first appeared during the Tang Dynasty (600–900 CE).

Erhu in the Mets

Over the following centuries, the erhu evolved into a folk instrument most often seen in southern China.

An accomplished erhu player, Liu Tianhua, introduced the erhu to Beijing in the 1920s, updating the instrument and composing new music for it.

The bodies of many erhus are covered with python skin. In 2005, new regulations were put in place in China requiring documentation of the origins of the skin; today, erhu python skins must come from farm-raised pythons rather than endangered wild specimens.

The player vibrates the skin by bowing the two strings. The two strings are tuned to A and D – interestingly, the same pitches as the middle two strings of a violin.

Hardanger fiddle   

The national instrument of Norway, the Hardanger fiddle has inspired generations of composers, from Edvard Grieg to film composer Howard Shore.

The earliest surviving Hardanger fiddle was built in 1651 by maker Ole Jonsen Jaastad, who lived in the town of Hardanger, Norway.

A Hardanger fiddle made by Knut Gunnarsson Helland. Owned by Monica Skaro, who inherited it from her grandfather Knut Skaro from Geilo, Norway

Although at first glance a Hardanger fiddle looks similar to a modern violin, there are some noteworthy differences.

The fiddle has four main strings like a violin, as well as secondary strings that vibrate sympathetically when particular pitches are played.

A Hardanger fiddle also has a longer scroll and more tuning pegs (to account for the extra strings), a larger bridge designed to facilitate playing on two strings at once, and folk-inspired decorations.

The Hardanger fiddle, like many European folk instruments, has long been associated with the devil. In fact, during religious revivals of the 1800s, many Hardanger fiddles were destroyed.

In 2023, we wrote about the history of the Hardanger fiddle and how Grieg was inspired by it: https://interlude.hk/finding-home-griegs-violin-sonata-no-1/

Conclusion

From the Apache fiddle’s agave stem to the Hardanger fiddle’s sympathetic strings, these six instruments represent just a fraction of the world’s bowed string traditions.

The violin may be the version most familiar to Western ears – but as these instruments attest, the instinct to draw a bow across a string to make it sing is very nearly universal.

Seven of the Most Expensive Pianos Ever Made

 by Emily E. Hogstad  September 4th, 2026

What makes a piano worth millions? The answer, it turns out, varies wildly.

The most expensive pianos in the world include instruments commissioned for billionaires, built for charity, and used to compose some of the most beloved songs ever written. One hid secret documents in a classic film; another toured sites of American tragedy as a symbol of peace.

Today we’re looking at the stories behind seven of the most expensive pianos ever made, going from least expensive to most expensive.

$1.6 million – Steinway & Sons Sound of Harmony Piano

Steinway Sound of Harmony

In 2008, Steinway announced that it had built its most expensive piano to date.

It was commissioned for Chinese art curator Guo Qingxiang. Guo’s job is to buy, sell, and collect high-end artwork for the Dalian Wanda Group, a multinational conglomerate based in Beijing.

Guo began his career focused solely on Chinese art, but has since expanded into buying Western art.

One of the pieces Guo commissioned was a custom Steinway, featuring inlays consisting of forty different types of wood.

The lid features reproductions of art by Chinese painter Shi Qi.

$1.9 million – The Steinway & Sons (RED) Piano

Steinway & Sons Red Pops for Red Parlor Grand © Houston Piano

Most of the pianos on this list were custom-made for the luxury market, but this particular instrument was built for charity.

In 2006, musician Bono from the band U2 and Bobby Shriver of the Kennedy family teamed up to found an organisation called (RED).

The organisation encouraged companies to launch red products to symbolise both love and AIDS awareness.

In 2013, Sotheby’s hosted a charity auction spearheaded by designers Sir Jonathan Ive and Marc Newson, with proceeds benefiting AIDS research.

(RED): The Very Best of Design and Innovation   

At the 2013 edition of the auction, Bono and Coldplay’s Chris Martin performed on a Steinway at the auction before it sold for nearly $2 million.

The proceeds went to The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria in Africa.

$2.2 million – John Lennon’s Piano – Steinway Model Z

Imagine

John Lennon was one of the greatest songwriters of all time, so it’s no surprise that one of his pianos is on the list!

In December 1970, shortly after the Beatles’ breakup, he bought an upright Steinway Model Z piano.

He went on to compose his early solo work, including the song “Imagine”, on this instrument.

John Lennon The making of Imagine 1971   

After Lennon’s murder in 1980, the piano found its way to a private collector. When that collector decided to sell it in 2000, the instrument went to auction.

Pop star George Michael submitted the winning bid of £1.45 million, which, in 2000 dollars, was roughly $2.2 million.

Beginning in 2006, the instrument was displayed at various sites of American violence, such as the assassination of President Kennedy, the bombing of the Oklahoma City Federal Building, and the mass shooting at Virginia Tech.

This evolved into the Imagine Piano Peace Project in 2007, and videos were filmed of performers playing “Imagine” on the piano at these sites. Those videos would then be used for fundraising.

The piano has since been on display at the Musical Instrument Museum in Phoenix, Arizona, and at the Beatles pilgrimage site, Strawberry Field, outside of Liverpool.

$2.4 million – Steinway & Sons Fibonacci Piano

Fibonacci spiral

In 2013, when Steinway wanted to celebrate the construction of its 600,000th piano, the company turned to artisan furniture maker Frank Pollaro.

He responded with an instrument inspired by the Fibonacci sequence. A Fibonacci sequence is a sequence in which each number is the sum of the two preceding ones.

Patterns and proportions dictated by Fibonacci sequences often occur in nature, such as in the spiral of an unfolding fern. Here, they appear as carvings on the piano.

The Fibonacci Piano was created out of six logs of Macassar ebony and took over six thousand hours to craft.

Pollaro said of the project, “Combining the universal languages of music and mathematics suddenly made perfect sense.”    

$2.5 million – Steinway & Sons Pictures at an Exhibition

Pictures at an Exhibition

© steinway.com

Modest Mussorgsky’s “Pictures at an Exhibition” is a famous piano suite written in 1874. It was inspired by an exhibit of Viktor Hartmann’s works, the artist friend of Mussorgsky.

To make their “Pictures at an Exhibition” piano, Steinway & Sons took direct inspiration from the suite – and the art that had inspired it.

The Making of “Pictures at an Exhibition” Steinway Piano by Paul Wyse   

Renowned artist Paul Wyse painted reproductions of Hartmann’s surviving works onto the white case of a Steinway. He also added portrayals of viewers strolling past and taking in the art.

The striking interior of the lid features a massive landscape of the Bogatyr Gates in Kyiv, the subject of the famous final movement of “Pictures at an Exhibition,” known as “The Great Gate of Kyiv.”

As of 2026, this piano has been listed for sale at $2.5 million.

$3 million – C. Bechstein Louis XV

Bechstein

In 2013, to celebrate its 160th anniversary, the C. Bechstein piano company designed a sumptuous piano model named the Louis XV.

It was a recreation of an instrument made for the court of Queen Victoria, which has since been lost.

This modern piano boasts a gilded case decorated with carvings and paintings inspired by the Rococo style of artist Antoine Watteau.

A team of highly skilled artisans banded together to create this extraordinary reproduction, and it took a full three years to design and craft.

C. Bechstein “Louis XV” grand piano: Dudana Mazmanishvili performs Barcarole by Chopin   

However, the Bechstein Louis XV has not been without controversy. The piano’s keys, like the original inspiration, are made of ivory – a material banned for sale in many countries, due to its connections with poaching.

At the time of its construction, it was sent to China. Today it is in the Potsdam Palace in Germany.

$3.4 million – The piano from Casablanca

Casablanca

The classic 1942 film Casablanca takes place in a nightclub owned by Rick Blaine (played by Humphrey Bogart).

Rick’s Café Américain is teeming with refugees – as well as the government officials who are seeking to arrest or kill them.

Blaine has chosen the piano’s interior as a hiding place for important papers, called letters of transit, that will allow their carriers to move easily through war-torn Europe.

Blaine’s ex, Ilsa Lund (played by Ingrid Bergman), visits the cafe. She is wistful and still in love with him. She encourages the house pianist Sam to “Play it, Sam. Play ‘As Time Goes By.'” He agrees, reluctantly.  

In November 2014, the piano used in this pivotal scene was sold by Bonhams in New York for $3.4 million as part of a sale of movie memorabilia.

The owner’s identity is unknown, but the price they paid is the highest ever for a piano at auction.

Conclusion

The most expensive pianos in the world are worth far more than their materials or craftsmanship alone. Each one has an unforgettable story.

Whether you’re a pianist, a music lover, or simply someone who appreciates an extraordinary object, these are pianos that reward a second look – or listen.