All last week, our fortepiano was rented out for rehearsals of Haydn's Creation to be performed at Carnegie Hall on Sat the 14th. (Nothing like a good rental fee for Valentines day! LOL) I went along for a rehearsal, knitted while I listened and inwardly singing along (the last time I sang this was at Lincoln Center for Mostly Mozart 20-some years ago) and son Chris helped hubby schlepp the fortepiano on Saturday.

Here's the Fortepiano - a copy of Mozart's last instrument - a 1785 Walter. Ours was made in 1990 by Jacob Kaeser.


The piano behaved beautifully, but the real story was that the tenor soloist got sick and they had to find a replacement at the last minute. The ringer, Nicholas Phen, is a phenomenal young man with quite a career ahead of him. Evidently he had never sung the work in German before and pulled it off so beautifully that THE TIMES even mentioned his diction. (The chorus and especially the soprano really LACKED in diction. I'm only mentioning this because I sang with Robert Shaw and he was a stickler for diction)

ANYWAY, it was a wonderful show, and THE TIMES gave it a positive review.