The Harp of David

The old Russian pianist lay on his deathbed in Jerusalem, and with his last breath he spoke to his young grandson. He told of an antique piano, with a tone so beautiful that it had been called the Harp of King David. Its richly carved case--so people said--was hewn of wood from Solomon's temple in Jerusalem. That part was legend, but the piano itself was fact. It stood, the old man told young Avner Carmi, in King Victor Emanuel's palace in Rome, and Avner's mission was to call on the King one day, in order to see and hear the wondrous instrument.

That was in 1917. Young Avner Carmi went on to become a piano tuner (he worked for the late great Artur Schnabel, among others), and when his travels took him to Italy in the '30s, he tried to carry out his grandfather's wish. The famous piano was there, all right. It had been built around 1800 in Turin by piano-makers named Marchisio and a woodcarver named Ferri. Decades later, the city council of Siena had presented it to Crown Prince Umberto (later King Umberto I) as a wedding present. It seemed within Carmi's reach at last, but Italy's Fascist bureaucrats never gave him permission to enter the royal palace.

Then came World War II, and Carmi enlisted in a British transport unit. In North Africa, his outfit was attached to Montgomery's Eighth Army. One day at El Alamein, Carmi was collecting debris left by Rommel's retreat when he came across a bulky, grey object. It proved to be a piano, encased in a rock-hard coating of plaster, its innards too sand-clogged to sound.

Saved from the Fire. Along with other refuse of war, the piano was supposed to be burned on a giant scrap heap in the desert. Carmi did not suspect that there might be anything special about it, but he could not bear the thought of any piano's being burned, no matter how old and battered. He got permission from his superior officer to keep it out of the flames. Later, partially restored but still encased in plaster, the piano was given to a troupe of entertainers touring the British armies in the Mediterranean.

Somehow, the troupe and its piano kept crossing Carmi's path--at Palermo, again in Naples. Finally, as he learned later, the British left it at Tel Aviv. A beekeeper found it, tried to use it as a hive. A chicken farmer tried to use it as an incubator, a butcher as a meat safe. Finally it was cast out into the street as useless. There Avner Carmi--by now out of the service and once more a piano tuner--again found what he called "my plaster piano pal." When he saw that the insides had been ripped out with only the sounding board left, he sadly decided to abandon it.

But he could not shake it off that easily: a few days later it turned up at his piano-repair shop. A music-loving plasterer had found it and handed Carmi an advance with orders to fix the instrument. Later, the plasterer changed his mind and demanded his money back. He demanded it vehemently. He pounded his fist on the piano. As he did so, the plaster casing cracked and the head and torso of a little wooden cherub came into view.

Carmi hurriedly handed over the money, then feverishly started to remove the rest of the plaster. Sluices of benzine, alcohol, vinegar and lemon juice failed to part plaster from wood, but 24 gallons of acetone finally did the trick. What emerged was an elaborately carved case, featuring a frieze of plump, drunken cherubs hauling their equally drunken queen across the piano face with most unmusical leers. Carmi dug out an old picture of the king's piano. It was the same.

Mission Accomplished. How had the piano found its way to North Africa in the first place? Presumably, some looting German soldiers had taken it along for their own troop entertainers. Still puzzling over the coincidences that had brought him the piano, Carmi set to work. Using the original, wafer-thin cypress wood sounding board as a guide, he painstakingly restored the piano, installed a new-action and strings. The job took three years. In 1953, he arrived in the U.S. to show off his transformed desert pal.

The piano's first recording was released this week (The Siena Pianoforte, Esoteric), and it sounds good enough, indeed, to be called King David's Harp. The record contains six little Scarlatti sonatas and one bigger one by Mozart (K. 333), elegantly played by rising Manhattan Pianist Charles Rosen. Although the piano's origin is closer to Mozart's day than Scarlatti's, the gem-pure Scarlatti pieces are more effectively unveiled. Through Pianist Rosen's subtle fingers--and the piano's remarkable characteristics--the piquant upper lines take on the diamond-point clarity of a harpsichord, while the sonatas' lower notes emerge with something like a modern piano's warmer, darker mass of tone. The total effect is a fusion of contrasting elements into a near-perfect whole.

Piano Tuner Carmi is now devoting his whole life to his beloved little piano, has nearly finished a book about it and has arranged for seven more records, each devoted to a different musical period, from Bach to Debussy. He knows the piano's story is not yet done, but he has amply fulfilled his grandfather's mission.

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