2023-10-02 04:11:01
Berdux, built in 1908. A vintage car, but not a car. It is a grand piano that makes Sigurd Hennemann rave. “Top restored” is the 115-year-old instrument for which the teacher at the Bruckner Private University, who recently also teaches at the Munich University of Music, was looking for a suitable place – and found it.
“I wanted to have a space for the instrument that you might close to play, but also open to give concerts,” says Hennemann. He found this room in the chapel of the St. Dionysen Traun Center for Care and Nursing.
“Special sound”
Martin Brazda is the man who made this possible. He is not only the director of the home in St. Dionysen Traun, but as chairman of the Fanny Hensel Concert Choir he also has a strong connection to music. So the two started talking and the chapel in the care center was an ideal place to give the old wing a place that would give Hennemann the chance to use it. “I like to play when I’m not stressed,” he says, which is why the instrument should be placed where there is no stress.
The instrument has a very special sound despite, or perhaps because of, its age. “Very rich in overtones, voluminous, with a super nice sound” – that’s how Hennemann describes the grand piano. Before the First World War, the instrument “preserved the sound that composers had in their heads.” “The idea of beauty is preserved in it,” says the musician, who also wants to bring this to interested people.
This is also an idea that Brazda liked. On Sunday the chapel opened for the first time for a concert with free admission. “Sigurds Salon” took the audience into “unimagined listening worlds” in the followingnoon. Together with Elisabeth Köstler (violin) and Valentina Kutzarova (mezzo-soprano), Hennemann also presented the sound of the historic grand piano.
For him, it’s not just regarding musical enjoyment, but also regarding understanding. And so Hennemann, who lives with his family in Linz, likes to explain the music and the compositions to people. “I like to create connections and provide people with information so they can understand the atmosphere.”
The residents of the nursing home can also hear Hennemann when he plays outside of the concerts. Because the grand piano stands in the chapel to sound.
Author
Reinhold Gruber
Local editor Linz
Reinhold Gruber
1696222491
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