Bach Fest Brings Extraordinary Pianist and Pianos

Eugene - World-famous pianist Jeffrey Kahane completes his exploration of Beethoven's Piano Concertos on Thursday night by performing on a very special piano.

Jeffrey Kahane is performing on one of the world's rarest pianos. Only a half-dozen of them are in North America, and two have been loaned to the Oregon Bach Festival for Kahane's concerts. The master pianist can't say enough about the instruments, "This piano is called a Fazioli. Theyr'e made in a very small town outside of Venice, Italy, called Sacile. and Paolo Fazioli is an amazing man who about 25 years ago---he actually was a very fine pianist himself who was trained as an engineer---decided he wanted to build the world's most beautiful piano."

One of the pianos Kahane will play has features other pianos don't... a fourth pedal. Kahane says, "it moves the entire mechanism inside the piano up towards the strings which allows you to get a a very wonderful, gentle, soft color which you cannot get any other way, a unique kind of sound. To make it work you actually have to depress two pedals with one of your feet and one with the other. It requires a little bit of extra fancy footwork."

With this instrument, Kahane creates a new way of hearing Beethoven's concertos.