In tune with Mozart’s classic keys

Czech workshop specializes in building replicas of pianos played by the greats

DIVISOV, Czech Republic — The sign on the old sunlit house reads “Machine Factory” but now handiwork reigns in this workshop where replicas of fortepianos once played by the world’s greatest musical geniuses are created.

Since 1998, more than 200 copies of pianos played by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Joseph Haydn or Frederic Chopin have left the house in the village of Divisov, some 40 kilometers southeast of Czech capital Prague.

“Authenticity. There can be no other purpose in replicating these instruments,” said their builder, Paul McNulty, a 64-year-old US citizen of Irish descent, whose small round glasses liken him to John Lennon.

“I want to raise no eyebrows if the original builder walks past my instrument,” he added.

Italian Bartolomeo Cristofori invented the piano around 1700, and fortepianos were made until the 19th century, serving a number of Classicist and Romantic composers.

They were then replaced by the heavier modern piano with a metal frame.

McNulty first studied guitar, then switched to piano tuning before embarking on his career as a fortepiano builder at a Boston workshop.

“I got my degree and I went to this man and I said, ‘I’ll work for you for one dollar per hour’. He couldn’t say no. He showed me how to sharpen the blade and some osmosis happened,” McNulty said.

His entire house is packed with copies of pianos originally made by Johann Andreas Stein, JeanLouis Boisselot or Mozart’s piano builder Anton Walter.

McNulty himself produces between 10 and 15 pianos a year, spending 800 to 6,000 hours on each of the instruments, whose prices start at 30,000 euros ($37,000) apiece, lifetime warranty included.

Raw materials

McNulty moved to the Czech Republic in 1995 via the Netherlands, in search of quality spruce logs for his instruments.

“The Schwarzenberg forest in the Czech Sumava (mountains) is the original source of wood for fortepiano makers in Vienna and elsewhere,” said McNulty, who recently received Czech citizenship.

“I get the tree and I saw it up into eighths and they sit out in the garden for five or 10 years and then I slice it up on a saw into soundboard pieces,” he said.

Besides the soundboard wood, McNulty uses iron strings, not steel, and the hammer heads are covered with the skin of hair sheep, an old breed with shorter hair than the thick wool of their modern cousins.

The former guitar and lute player confessed that he cannot play the piano, but he has a very capable tester at hand: His wife, Viviana Sofronitsky, a fortepiano virtuoso and the daughter of acclaimed Russian pianist Vladimir Sofronitsky.

Russian pianist Alexei Lubimov once said: “For me, Paul McNulty is the embodiment of the ideal master, who is summarizing the makers from different epochs.

“He is a master who is able to travel through time as if he had magic boots. He can go from Mozart’s era to Chopin’s, then from Brahms’ back to Beethoven.”