THE SHOCK OF THE OLD

Kristian Bezuidenhout releases the subtle power of the fortepiano.

- ALEX ROSS

The other day, the keyboard player Kristian Bezuidenhout was standing onstage at Hertz Hall, on the campus of the University of California, Berkeley, in a state of slight panic. Around him were four instruments housed at the university’s music department, representing stages in keyboard development from the seventeenth century to the mid-nineteenth. On one side was a harpsichord, of the kind that Bach might have played. In the middle were two fortepianos—early-stage pianos with a light action and a crisp, characterful sound. Behind them was an 1854 grand piano, from the illustrious firm of Érard. Modern grands are well-tooled machines, fairly predictable in their behavior, even if virtuosos fuss over them and badger technicians with requests for adjustments. Older pianos, with their variegated mechanisms and idiosyncratic construction, are far more temperamental. To present a program on four different historical instruments—as Bezuidenhout was going to do later that day, in a recital for the Berkeley series Cal Performances—is to invite chaos.

“These older instruments, and even the modern copies, function so differently in rehearsal and in concert,” Bezuidenhout told me. “Sometimes you have this feeling in rehearsal: ‘Oh, yes, this is really making sense, the piano is really helping me.’ Then, in concert, they kind of turn on you. The five-octave pianos, especially, can betray you, leave you in the dust. You say to yourself, ‘Where is that sound I heard four hours ago?’ It may have to do with a change of humidity, or a way of reacting to the room. But it’s as if they can sense your level of stress, your preoccupation, and then they seize up—like some kind of really mean cat.”