The fortepiano is the first name used to indicate the piano.


Born around 1700 by the Italian Bartolomeo Cristofori, it immediately became the first choice of composers of the period.


Its shape was very similar to the harpsichord, inside of it there weren’t metal reinforcements and the sound was produced by hammers covered with leather that struck the chord.

The fortepiano cannot be regarded as a primitive instrument subsequently refined arriving until precisely at the piano, because the fortepiano was fully functional to the needs of musicians and to ones’ of the era in its greatest splendor. And it’s in this context that, in the last fifty years, the renewed interest in a philological reading of the musical production of the Classical and Romantic period has led to the rediscovery, revaluation and restoration of the fortepiano, not more and not just as a museum relic, but as a tool of music.



The fortepiano used was a copy of one of Johann Andreas Stein (1728-1792) built by Bizzi in 2010. This is not a copy of a particular historical model of Stein, but rather a combination of best solutions found on different fortepianos left in Stein’s factory. The novelty of its instruments lies in the mechanical recoil with the escapement where the hammer is mounted in a forked branch near the back end of the button.