The Jane Austen Collection: music from the Austen family collection performed on historic instruments

"Yes, yes, we will have a pianoforte, as good a one as can be got for thirty guineas, and I will practise country dances, that we may have some amusement for our nephews and nieces, when we have the pleasure of their company."

So wrote Jane Austen (1775-1817) to her sister Cassandra on 27th December 1808. Music played a significant part in Jane's life in the cottage at Chawton in Hampshire she shared with her mother and sister. According to Caroline, one of her nieces, she practised the pianoforte each day before breakfast, but could not be prevailed upon to perform in public.

This CD by original-instrument specialists Concert Royal presents music from the personal collection of the Austen family; music that would have been heard, if not played and sung, by Jane, her parents and her sister Cassandra. Performed in "drawing-room" style this is music presented as it would have been heard in Jane's time. The CD also includes extracts from "Pride and Prejudice" and "Emma" and from some of Jane's letters to her sister, including the above reference to the family's forthcoming acquisition of a square piano, an instrument of the type used on this recording. Very different in tone (and tuning) to the modern grand piano, it is sometimes difficult to believe that this is the type of keyboard upon which many of the great works of Mozart were composed.

"This is a delightful idea for a recording… The non-musical items in the programme are done splendidly by the soprano Margarette Ashton… The performers themselves, Concert Royal, are excellent. With original instruments which include a one keyed flute and a square piano joining a soprano voice that is small but admirably suited to the repertoire the concept succeeds. The well-recorded programme really does create images of the scene that we are intended to imagine."
A recommendation then for an imaginative and enterprising CD - Classical Music on the Web