Thomas Mann’s piano will be restored with Beethoven’s opus 111

Thomas Mann’s piano will be restored with Beethoven’s opus 111

News

norman lebrecht

August 13, 2021

The writer Thomas Mann’s personal piano has been bequeathed to the German state by his grandson.

After restoration, it will be ceremonially received in October into public ownership with a performance of Beethoven’s last sonata, a work of immense significance in Mann’s major work, Doctor Faustus.

 


Mann with friends Bruno Walter and Toscanini

Comments

  • Pianofortissimo says:

    Interesting. Any information about the piano’s manufacturer, and who will be the pianist?

  • Gustavo says:

    Let me guess: Igor Levit?

  • Ruben Greenberg says:

    Which grandson? Frido, I suppose. I wonder who has Andre Gide’s piano. -or Sartre’s. -or Einstein’s violin.

  • Edgar Self says:

    Op. 111is a good choice. There is an entire lecture-recital on it in “Doktor Faustus” that deeply impressed Mann’s friend Bruno Walter, who wrote him about it. In the book it is played by Adrian Leveerkuehn’s teacher, Wendell Kretschmar, a German-American.

    If the piano is from Mann’s Pacific Palisades house in California, it could be the one Bruno Walter played in a private recital with Bronislaw Hubermann for Mann’s birthday. His former home in Bad Toelz was confiscated by the Nazis. His last home was in ZLuerich-Kuesnacht.

    Mann was a good enough violinist in his youth to play chamber music with friends. I’ve never heard of him as a pianist, but he probably knew his way around the piano.

  • Richard Eggers says:

    Please stop emailing me if I have to pay money

  • John Borstlap says:

    Mann’s ‘Doktor Faustus’ is his masterpiece.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doctor_Faustus_(novel)

  • Edgar Self says:

    Morgan, many thanks for the articles with details. I don’t see the writer’s name but am guessing it is Mann’s grandson Frido. Frido

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