Historical Keyboard Instruments at Southampton
In our dedicated Keyboard Room in the Nuffield Theatre we keep a 1796 Broadwood grand pianoforte , another of 1826, a modern copy by Christopher Barlow of a Viennese Schantz grand of 1802, and the well-documented 1812 grand by William Frecker. In the nearby lecture theatre is a Bechstein grand of 1900.
At Chawton House (the International Library of Women’s Writing, and once the home of Jane Austen’s brother) we keep a Stodart Patent Compensating Grand of about 1835 on which our students and staff frequently give concerts.
The personal collection of our Head of Keyboard, Professor David Owen Norris, includes an 1828 Broadwood grand, a 1781 Ganer Square and an 1881 Pleyel grand. The two nineteenth-century Broadwoods, our 1900 Bechstein, and the newly acquired Frecker, all possess the divided sustaining pedal that forms a strand of Owen Norris’s Devices & Desires project.
Recordings issued as part of the Devices & Desires project:
Sullivan Songs & Ballads. Chandos double-CD CHAN10935 (2021)
Sullivan Songs & Ballads. 36 RNCM films (2020)
The Jupiter Project: Mozart. Hyperion CDA68234 (2019)
Bilingual Songs: Sterndale Bennett, Battison Haynes, Parry. EM Records CD054 (2019)
Sullivan Songs & Ballads. Chandos double-CD CHAN10935 (2017)
A recent innovation, a spin-off from Professor Jeanice Brooks’s AHRC project ‘Music, Home & Heritage’, is a collaboration with the National Trust at The Vyne, near Basingstoke. The Vyne possesses an 1846 Broadwood grand. Our students performed in Mendelssohn projects at The Vyne in 2018 & 2019.
Our links with Romsey Abbey gives us access to the magnificent four-manual Walker pipe-organ of 1860. Our organ lessons are given in the cathedrals of Salisbury (Henry Willis 1876) and Winchester (Henry Willis 1851/Hele 1904), and our students can arrange practice time there. St. Michael’s Church in central Southampton, the base for the University Choral Scholars, Cantores Michaelis, and the organ scholar, has a new four-manual Hauptwerk copy of the 1893 Willis in Hereford Cathedral.
Modern Keyboard Instruments at Southampton
In the University Concert Hall, Turner Sims , we have two grand pianos – a Steinway Model D and a Fazioli F212 – and a modern single-manual harpsichord by Andrea Goble. We have two new Bechsteins and a Mason & Hamlin Model BB Grand (7-feet) in our larger teaching rooms, along with a Feldberg harpsichord with eight registration pedals, which services our Revival Harpsichord project at Mottisfont . Our practice rooms are equipped with new Bechstein upright pianos, another Goble harpsichord, and a two-manual and pedal Johannus electronic organ.
We have presented our 1976 three-manual tracker-action pipe organ by Peter Collins, formerly in Turner Sims, to Orford Parish Church, which possesses an acoustic more suitable to a baroque-style organ. The organ’s closeness to the Aldeburgh Festival, and Orford’s links to Benjamin Britten, will ensure that its concert life will become even more varied. Catherine Ennis has recorded a CD on the organ in its new home (Priory PRCD 1235) . The move has freed valuable floor space in the Turner Sims, which can now accommodate a full symphony orchestra.
