Broadwood Piano Festival, 9th October - report

I attended the Broadwood Piano Festival in the Village Hall at Lythe near Whitby (next to Broadwood's workshops and showroom) on the 9th October, so I thought it might be nice to share a quick report and a few photos. The event was organized over the weekend of 9th and 10th October and there were quite a lot of instruments on display, including a full-size Broadwood barless concert grand piano and several clavichords.

The Broadwood Barless Concert Grand

This is a Broadwood barless concert grand piano from 1900, which was once used for Promenade Season concerts at the Royal Albert Hall in London. It was certainly able to fill the space inside Lythe Village Hall with sound as everyone enjoyed a wonderful performance from concert pianist You-Chiung Lin.

The barless design is unique to Broadwoods, removing the bracing bars that are a feature of normal cast iron grand piano frames. The design was developed by Henry John Tschudi Broadwood in the 1880s and the first examples were produced in 1888. One of the major challenges was that, without the intermediate bars, a cast iron frame is not strong enough to hold the massive compressive force of the strings - around sixteen tons on a typical instrument, and sometimes even more on a large concert grand; thus, in the earlier examples, pressed steel was used instead. After 1895, the material used was cast steel, so the piano has a large and heavy steel frame which flexes significantly when string tension is applied. 

Broadwood barless pianos were made up until around 1927, and no other manufacturer has ever produced a similar design.

The concert also featured a demonstration on a clavichord built recently at the Broadwood workshops. 

Clavichord built at the Broadwood workshops

This clavichord was used as part of the concert, to show how Bach's work might have sounded on an instrument similar to that which might have been used by Bach himself. The clavichord was popular up until the 18th century, and operates by a simple tangent (usually a small piece of metal) hitting the strings. They are capable of great expression, but are only suitable for intimate settings as they are very quiet in comparison to a piano (or the harpsichord, which was also popular around the same period).

In addition, two other clavichords from the Broadwood workshops were on display including this one, pictured above. There was also a display of action models representing action types found on 19th century pianos, and several other pianos, all available for people to try out on the day.

Various piano action models, showing how different types of grand actions worked (as well as a square piano action closest to the camera).

An early 20th century Broadwood upright piano

Many thanks to everyone at Broadwood pianos in Lythe, Whitby, for organizing a thoroughly interesting and enjoyable event.