Pleyel cross-strung video

[michael-rockowitz]

Hi all,

Here’s a video of a cross-strung player from Belgium, playing, I understand, an actual Pleyel cross-strung harp, beautifully (IMHO!):

Pleyel cross-strung player Paola C.

Michael

[jessica-wolff]

That’s amazing, for a Pleyel to last in playing condition to this day and age!

[barbara-brundage]

Jessica, in Belgium, where she is, the chromatic harp is still taught in the conservatory. It’s never died out there the way it did most other places. There are a lot of Pleyels in Brussels (including a really cool art nouveau one in the Musical Instrument Museum). In the classical music stores you see chromatic harp recordings all over the place.

And yeah, that’s a very interesting and impressive video. Thanks!

[Saul Davis Zlatkovski]

But they haven’t been built for years, I understand. They are all playing on old instruments, albeit with first-class wood. Now, if someone would figure out an improved construction method…………..Carl………………..it might be worth pursuing.

[carl-swanson]

The R and D that the Pleyel company did in the 1890’s is as valid today as it was then. They found out very early on that these harps had to be built like battle ships. They are heavy and rigid, with a huge metal ‘keel’ under the soundboard to support it. For this reason they have a completely different resonance than a pedal harp. You really can’t hear it on this recording. In person, they sound ‘tubby’, with a lot of resonance but not a really clear attack. Debussy hated them, but wrote several pieces for chromatic harp for the money.

I’ve had a Pleyel chromatic harp in my living room for 20 years or so and have been wondering what to do with it.

[Alison]

The other day I had dinner with friends and discovered, as she is French, her Pleyel piano, an upright model, 30 years old in polished dark mahogany and a very nice instrument, well what do I know about piano’s…

However as she finds the English have almost never heard of Pleyel she was

[Author]

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