Tom Beghin at the replica Erard piano. Photo by
Johan Vanbrabant, courtesy of Tom Beghin.
The 2024 Nicholas Bessaraboff Prize is awarded to Tom Beghin for Beethoven’s French Piano: A Tale of Ambition and Frustration, written in collaboration with Robin Blanton, Chris Maene, Michael Pecak, and Tilman Skowroneck (University of Chicago Press, 2022). A testament to the productive environment of the Orpheus Institute for Advanced Studies & Research in Music, this book is engagingly written and superbly illustrated. At the heart of the book is the story Beghin and his collaborators tell of Beethoven’s complicated relationship to his 1803 Erard Frères piano and their project to replicate the instrument. Bringing together meticulous attention to organological detail and musical insights gleaned from the instrument, Beethoven’s French Piano opens our ears anew to the early nineteenth-century piano.
Bessaraboff Prize committee: Emily Dolan, Matthew Zeller, Carol Lynn Ward-Bamford
Chris Maene and Tom Beghin at the original Erard piano in the collection of the Oberösterreichisches Landesmuseum, Linz, Austria. Photo by Steven Maes, courtesy of Tom Beghin.
A trailer from the resulting recording