"This is definitely piano country"

After his break with the archbishop Hieronymus Count Colloredo and his concomitant departure from Salzburg, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was eager to find fixed employment in Vienna, Already in April 1781, he wrote to his father, "I assure you that this is a wonderful place and for my métier the best place In the world."

In the most important city of music at the time, the court, nobility and clergy kept the glo­rious musical tradition alive and also the bour­geoisie took part in the musical happenings. Mozart sought to earn his keep from then on as a freelance artist, with piano instructions, sub­scription concerts, as the interpreter of his own works and via commissioned works. He wrote to his father on June 2, 1781,
" This is definitely piano country."

The triumph of the fortepiano had begun in Vienna several decades previously. The leading piano builder of the end of the 18th century and beginning of the 19th was Anton Walter (1752­- 1826). In the Musical Almanac of Vienna and Prague (Jahrbuch der Tonkunst von Wien and Prag), published in 1796, Johann Ferdinand von Schoenfeld praises Walter's instruments: "His fortepianos have a full bell sound, clear attack, and a strong, full bass. The tones are somewhat dull at first, yet when one plays them for some time the treble becomes especially clear."

Mozart's preferred piano was also an instrument from Anton Walter's workshop. After having played initially on borrowed pianos in Vienna, for instance a Stein grand from the Countess Thun, he procured his own fortepiano in the first half of 1782. He used this piano in concert as well.

While in Mozart's time it was Anton Walter's fortepianos that experienced the greatest esteem among keyboard instruments, for string instruments it was the violins by the ingenious Tyrolean violin maker Jakob Stainer (1617­16831. The composer demonstrably possessed a copy of a Stainer violin as a concert Instru­ment.
In the Mozart literature, however, are a growing number of references to the presumed fact that Mozart also called an original Stainer his own.            

                                                                                                                                                                          Thomas Albertus Irnberger
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    translated by Albert Frantz