Paul McNulty (piano maker)
Paul McNulty ( born October 21, 1953 in Houston, Texas) is an American piano maker.
Life and work
In 1976, he began studying classical guitar at the Peabody Conservatory, he discovered his passion for historical musical instruments, and among other lute. In 1978 he went to the "New England School of Stringed Keyboard Instrument Technology ", where he studied with Bill Garlick and was trained as a piano tuner. In his final examination McNulty was awarded the highest degree granted "tuning examiner " (scene examiner ).
He attended a course at the Steinway factory in New York and could have begun as a restorer and technician in the Piano Factory, but opted for a career as a pianoforte maker and made a two-year training in the art of Robert Smith in Somerville, Massachusetts ( USA).
Paul McNulty fortepiano first bought the Norwegian Academy of Music. Additional copies ordered the Austrian pianist Paul Badura -Skoda and Trevor Pinnock, who gave an instrument for his concert at Carnegie Hall in order.
1986 invited John Gibbons Paul McNulty, to accompany him on his European tour with Frans Brüggen Orchestra of the 18th Century. Gibbons played the piano concertos K. 491 in C minor K. 466 and in d minor by Mozart. The highlight of the tour was the Hammerklavierreplikat of McNulty. In the same year McNulty moved to Amsterdam. In Bruges in Belgium EXPO 1989 his Hammerklavier gained great respect; further orders followed.
The search for the best materials, Paul McNulty eventually into the Czech Republic. Tradition holds that the former Viennese piano maker Conrad Graf for his soundboards timber from the Black Mountain Forest ( Sumava today ) used in South Bohemia. Since 1995, McNulty lives in Divišov. In 2004 he married the Russian- Canadian pianist Viviana Sofronitsky.
Since 1985, Paul McNulty has built 150 pianos, including for Malcolm Bilson, Mitsuko Uchida, the Conservatory in Amsterdam, the Royal Conservatory in The Hague, the Glyndebourne Festival, the Musikhochschule Hannover, for Alice and Nikolaus Harnoncourt, the Harvard University, the Royal College of Music and the Royal Academy of Music in London, the Schola Cantorum in Basel in Switzerland, the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki, Smith College in the United States, for the Chinese University of Hong Kong and the Warsaw Mozart Festival.
Works
- Fortepiano by Johann Andreas Stein, 1788
- Fortepiano by Anton Walter in 1782
- Fortepiano by Conrad Graf 1819, op 318
- Fortepiano by Ignaz Pleyel of 1830
- Fortepiano after Jean Louis Boisselot of 1846
- Concert grand by Pleyel from 1836 ( original grand piano for Chopin, replica 2009)
- Grand piano after Boisselot # 2800 of 1846 ( original wing for Franz Liszt for the Russia tour 1847, replica 2011 for the Liszt Museum in Weimar )
Paul McNulty 2009 created the first modern replica of a French piano this time, and although Chopin's favorite instrument. 2011 Paul McNulty was working on a replica of Franz Liszt Boisselot wing. The original instrument was manufactured in 1846 for Liszt's tour of Russia in the following year and used in the further consequence of Liszt in Weimar decades for compositions, but is now in such a poor state that it can no longer be playable. So the order was given to Paul McNulty to make the purchase Boisselot - wing as replica new.