page_title: Conrad Graf
section_title: Graf pianos played by celebrated musicians
hierarchical_section_title: Conrad Graf / Graf pianos played by celebrated musicians
caption_attribution_description: English: a painting of Franz Liszt playing in a Parisian salon a grand piano by Conrad Graf , who commissioned the painting; on the piano is a bust of Ludwig van Beethoven by Anton Dietrich; the imagined gathering shows seated Alexandre Dumas (père), George Sand, Franz Liszt, Marie d'Agoult; standing Hector Berlioz or Victor Hugo, Niccolò Paganini, Gioachino Rossini; a portrait of Byron on the wall and a statue of Joan of Arc on the far left.Current location: Staatliche Museen zu Berlin – Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz, Alte Nationalgalerie F.V. 42&#91;1&#93;&#91;2&#93;&#91;3&#93;
context_page_description: Conrad Graf was an Austrian-German piano maker. His pianos were used by Beethoven, Chopin, and Robert Schumann Clara Schumann, among others.
context_section_description: Probably in 1826 Graf lent to Ludwig van Beethoven a 6½-octave piano triple-strung to C♯, and quadruple-strung from D to the top (F4) – probably on the assumption that this stringing would make the piano more audible for the composer, who was quite deaf by this time. Graf's sound-channeling device, mentioned above, was also part of this effort.
  Following Beethoven's death in 1827, Graf took the piano back and sold it to the Wimer family of Vienna. The instrument survives today and is on display at the Beethoven-Haus in Bonn. The importance of the Graf to Beethoven's career is probably minor. According to Good, "the only work he wrote for piano after getting it was the four-hand transcription of the Grosse Fugue ... and the indications are that he was playing very little even for himself in the last three years of his life."
  In 1829, the 19-year-old Frédéric Chopin came to Vienna from Poland to give concert performances on the piano. Both Graf and his rival Matthäus Andreas Stein offered Chopin an instrument to use. Chopin, who was familiar with foreign pianos, unhesitatingly selected the Graf, and his Vienna concerts were a success. According to Goldberg, Chopin continued to "cherish" Graf instruments during his subsequent career in Paris.
  The famous virtuoso Franz Liszt, who played Graf pianos, must have been something of a thorn in Herr Graf's side, as the Graf piano was not always capable of standing up to the violence that Liszt inflicted on it during his more impassioned moments of playing. Friedrich Wieck wrote in his diary during Liszt's 1838 visit to Vienna, "We heard Liszt today at Conrad Graf's who was sweating as his piano did not survive the great duel—Liszt remained the victor." Wieck described another concert on the same visit in which Liszt "destroyed" two Grafs, as well as an Erard piano lent to him by Sigismond Thalberg.
  In 1840, Graf gave one of his firm's grand pianos as a gift to the young piano virtuoso Clara Wieck (Friedrich's daughter), on the occasion of her marriage to Robert Schumann. When Schumann died in 1856, Clara gave the instrument to her friend Johannes Brahms, who used it for his work until 1873. He then donated it to the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde; today it is on display in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna.
  During the 1880s, the young Gustav Mahler owned and played a very old piano, a Graf from about 1836. The instrument is currently housed in the Cobbe Collection near Guildford in England. The collection's web site suggests that Mahler simply could not afford a better piano at the time.
  Other musicians who owned or played Graf pianos included Friedrich Kalkbrenner and Camille Pleyel.
  In September 2018 Paul McNulty's fortepiano  Graf copy 1819  was used in first International Chopin Piano Competition (run by Fryderyk Chopin Institute)
caption: Franz Liszt playing a Graf piano at an imagined gathering of his friends.  1840 portrait commissioned by Conrad Graf from Josef Danhauser.
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