Borgo Veneto (Italy) (AFP)

Self-taught, Luigi Borgato decides at 23 to build a piano for himself.

Decades later, the prestigious Italian brand of the same name will have attracted buyers from all over the world.

But the coronavirus pandemic abruptly slowed it down.

"Everything has stopped, there are no more concerts, no more contact with the musicians. Without state aid, our profession may not come to the end of the pandemic", laments this factor of passionate pianos, 58 years old.

In his house in the open countryside in Borgo Veneto near Padua in northern Italy, everything exudes classical music: concert posters like that of La Scala in Milan are next to a bust of Verdi and a portrait of Beethoven.

At the back of the living room sits the Doppio Borgato, an imposing assembly of two superimposed grand pianos, accompanied by a 37-key pedal board.

Halfway between organ and piano, the concept was borrowed from Mozart who had a piano pedal built in 1785.

When Luigi Borgato starts playing a Chopin prelude to vibrate the strings of his creation, he almost apologizes, smirking, muttering that he should "study a little more".

To the right of the entrance, the latest addition to the collection, presented in 2017 by its inventor as being "the longest concert piano in the world", with 3.33 m, approximately 50 cm more than the standard .

Luigi Borgato and his wife Paola, in charge of the mechanical part, produce a maximum of two pianos per year, assisted by a single employee.

- 'Handcrafted' -

"Making concert pianos by hand like us, there is no one else in Italy, or even in the world," he says.

"But with the pandemic, people think twice about investing in a piano."

Especially since the prices of a Borgato oscillate between 291,000 and 486,000 euros excluding VAT, depending on the models, each of which represents more than 1,850 hours of work.

For Paola, 55, it can be heartbreaking when their creations are sold, almost all of them to clients abroad.

“There is always a beautiful part of our life in every instrument that goes,” she says.

"We are the country of art, but the profession of piano maker is not recognized by the Italian state", deplores her husband.

Italy is however the cradle of the piano, because it is there that Bartolomeo Cristofori, born in Padua, invented his ancestor, the pianoforte, in 1698.

In Europe, small piano manufacturers gradually disappeared in favor of large companies, which in turn were swallowed up by Asian giants, like the Austrian manufacturers Bösendorfer or German Schimmel.

- 'Vertiginously beautiful' -

In his workshop, Luigi Borgato meticulously takes the measurements, cuts, molds and glues the pieces, from the red fir soundboard to the hammer heads covered with merino wool felt, i.e. at least 15,000 for a grand piano.

After starting a career as a tuner in 1983, the young craftsman traveled the world, accompanied by his wife, to visit museums of musical instruments and to study the history of the piano.

On board an old Renault 4L, he went to Berlin in 1985 to visit his first piano factory, that of Bechstein.

It was also in Germany that he drew his inspiration for his first piano, after visiting the house in Bonn where Ludwig van Beethoven was born in 1770.

Like the German composer's last instrument, he created a piano with four strings struck for the high notes, instead of three, an idea he patented.

In 1991, the French virtuoso Jean Guillou, who died in 2019, inaugurated this piano at the Saint-Eustache Church in Paris, evoking a "young genius factor".

Since then, famous pianists like Radu Lupu, Vladimir Ashkenazy and Jerome Rose have given recitals on Borgato pianos.

If the concerts have ceased, the recordings continue.

Thus, the Italian pianist Francesco Libetta played for 20 hours Beethoven's 35 sonatas on a 3.33 m Borgato, "dizzyingly beautiful" according to him.

"This piano is gigantic, but the sound that emanates from it is very flexible, very nuanced, and allows you to switch easily from pianissimo to fortissimo", he testifies.

"It's like a great actor who whispers and the back row of the room hears him perfectly."

© 2021 AFP