ABSTRACT
About 1782, Mozart bought a piano by Gabriel Anton Walter. Mozart's piano, on which the majority of his mature keyboard works were composed and performed, still survives today, and may be seen in the Mozart Geburtshaus in Getreidegasse, Salzburg. Most recordings and performances of Mozart's sonatas on period pianos are on modern copies of Walter instruments. A Walter piano is considered by many present-day fortepianists to be the ideal instrument upon which to play Mozart's keyboard works. Walter effectively standardized what is known as the Viennese piano action at the end of the eighteenth century, with the hammers that strike the strings mounted directly on the far ends of the keys. The so-called Prellmechanik action, as opposed to the Stossmechanik, in which the hammers are mounted on a rail separate from the keys. Walter's pianos would seem, therefore, to be the ideal instruments for performing Mozart's piano sonatas.
