BORGATO – Italian Innovative Excellence Inspired by the Past

Luigi Borgato, born in 1963, designs and builds concert-grand pianos together with his wife Paola Bianchi, which are of innovative conception and highly regarded by well-known international pianists.
Each BORGATO piano is built completely by hand, unique reality of true handicraft creations in its field. BORGATO’s first grand piano, model BORGATO L 282, was presented in Pesaro in April 1991 for the European Congress “Europiano” for piano makers, technicians and tuners. Inspired by an idea of Beethoven*, Borgato builds his concert-grand pianos BORGATO L 282 with four strings struck per note in the 44 keys of the upper register of the keyboard (design patent BORGATO).

Inspired instead by compositions written for piano with pedalboard **, BORGATO designed, patented and built a new instrument, the “DOPPIO BORGATO”, the first double concert-grand piano with pedalboard. This instrument was presented in Perugia in September 2000 at the “Meeting of the Piano – 300 years since conception”, thus opening a new page to the musical world, this latest creation offering new possibilities to composers and performers.

The “DOPPIO BORGATO” L 282 – P 402 is made up of two superimposed concert-grand pianos, the upper instrument being the concert-grand BORGATO model L 282. The lower instrument is a grand piano BORGATO model P 402, operated by a pedalboard of 37 notes with an extension of 3 octaves (A 27,5 Hz – A 220 Hz), similar to those of the pedals of an organ. A “resonance” pedal is applied to the lower piano which activates the damper mechanism simultaneously on both instruments.

* Ludwig van Beethoven commissioned master craftsman Conrad Graf to make a fortepiano with four strings struck per note. It is possible to view this instrument in his home in his native city Bonn.
** In 1785 Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart owned a fortepiano with an independent pedalboard, built expressly for him by Anton Walter. In the autographed manuscript of the Concerto in D minor K466, composed the same year, it is possible to note the extended bass range due to the use of this instrument. Mozart’s father makes mention in some letters of Wolfgang’s use of this piano with pedalboard in public.

In the 19th and 20th centuries other composers also wrote for the piano with pedalboard, among these: 
Robert Schumann, Franz Liszt, Charles Valentin Alkan, Camille Saint-Saëns, Charles Gounod.

Silvio Celeghin plays Schumann opus 58 no. 3 on a Doppio Borgato:

Pianist Ingolf Wunder performs Chopin’s Scherzo no. 1 on a Borgato L 282:

Webpage: www.borgato.it