'Immortal Piano' up for auction

The Piano of Siena's 221-year journey began in Italy and included stops in Paris, a World War II battlefield in North Africa, New York and Tel Aviv.
PHOTO: AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE

CAESAREA (Israel) • A rare piano that could fetch more than a million dollars at an auction in Israel has a history as elaborate as the wood carvings adorning its frame.

The Piano of Siena's 221-year journey began in Turin, Italy, and included stops in Paris, a World War II battlefield in North Africa, New York and Tel Aviv.

Mr Moshe Porat, an Israeli piano tuner who has researched the instrument, said the light brown upright piano - decorated with carvings of wingless cherubs, animals, flora and other instruments - was a "visual masterpiece".

"Soon, the next chapter will begin with a new owner," he said, referring to the sale scheduled for today at Winner's auction house in Jerusalem.

Turin-based harpsichord maker Sebastian Marchisio started building the instrument in 1799, according to Winner's.

Mr Marchisio died before completing the piano, but his descendants finished work on it in 1825 and gave it as a wedding gift to Mr Marchisio's granddaughter Rebecca, who lived in Siena.

The unusually ornate instrument underwent several more modifications before appearing at the 1867 World's Fair in Paris, after which it was gifted to Italy's then prince and future King Umberto I.

The circumstances that saw the piano fall into Nazi hands are unclear. But, following the 1942 battle of El Alamein, as the British were looking to see what the defeated Germans had left behind, "the piano was discovered in a crate with a mine detector", said Mr Porat. "They were astonished to see a piano inside buried in the desert's sand."

The British army had no use for the piano, which had been covered in plaster.

It ended up in the hands of an Israeli merchant, who placed it outside the Tel Aviv piano workshop of Mr Avner Carmi, whose "life was changed" when he discovered the treasure, Mr Porat said.

Mr Carmi removed the plaster, fixed the piano's mechanism and later took it to the United States, where it was displayed in New York's Steinway Hall and used for recordings in the 1950s and 1960s.

Mr Carmi - who co-wrote a book about the piano, titled The Immortal Piano, with his wife Hannah - sold the instrument to a businessman in 1996.

Speaking from his spacious mansion in the posh coastal town of Caesarea, the current owner - who asked that his name be withheld - said parting with the piano was not easy.

"The more I learnt about it and its history, the more attached I became to the piano," he said.

But "everything has its time", he added. "One needs to know how to let go of beautiful things too."

AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE

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A version of this article appeared in the print edition of The Straits Times on March 03, 2020, with the headline 'Immortal Piano' up for auction. Subscribe