It all starts on October 17th, 1777 when young Mozart wrote to his father about his life changing encounter with Stein's pianos in Augsburg. Johann Andreas Stein was an influential organ, piano, and harpsichord builder, whose instruments so impressed young Mozart. The responsive and precise action, the sound, the well adjusted knee-lever to raise dampers - all of these features of the still fairly new type of instrument in 18th century Germany were excitedly relayed to his father in the famous letter.

Recently, organologists and musicologists concluded that it was quite likely that in the years of Mozart's first encounter with these instruments, Stein used a different type of hammer from what we are used to hearing today on modern reproductions. What he most likely used was bare wooden rings as hammer heads, which produced a bright lively sound akin to that of a harpsichord.  Today you will hear both…