The Dutch pianist and early music specialist keeps a tuner on call when he’s recording works for fortepiano.

I was trained as a modern pianist. It was only in the early ‘90s that I became fascinated by early pianos and their possibility to explore the composer’s sound-world in a much deeper way than a modern instrument would allow. For years I had the feeling that something was wrong whenever I played Mozart on a modern instrument: was it the music, was it my playing? It was only after accidentally coming across one of Paul McNulty’s instruments in Amsterdam that I realised that the problem had to do with the choice of instrument.

Learning to play fortepiano was a matter of trial and error. It took me three years before I dared to play a concert on my McNulty copy of an Anton Walter fortepiano, and even then it felt rather unsafe! It’s only after years of intensive playing and recording that I feel at ease on both.

I was lucky to have an inspirational teacher though, albeit on modern piano: the legendary Rudolf Serkin. He taught me to treat the great composers with the utmost respect, to study the manuscripts...