Research & Pianistic Implementation

When Camilla started working at Kai Köpp’s research project on 19th century instructive music editions at the HKB (2014), she started listening systematically to historical recordings from the beginning of the 20h century and grew more and more fascinated by 19th century interpretation strategies. The focus of her resulting dissertation was Lisztian interpretation practice and she dealt in-depth with the recordings of pianists like Eugen d’Albert, Frederic Lamond, or Arthur Friedheim, among many others.

At the same time, she started focusing on playing fortepianos of the 19th century. This interest had been developing from her early years when she started playing museum concerts regularly at the Beethovenhaus Bonn (from 1999) on the museum’s fortepianos by Conrad Graf, 1828, and Broadwood, 1817. From 2019 to 2022, her interaction with fortepianos further intensified when she had the privilege of daily access to replicas of important instruments (built by Chris Maene) at the Orpheus Institute in Ghent and discussing performance issues with Tom Beghin. This period contributed to widening her perspective on the canonical piano repertoire—along with her ongoing immersion with historical recordings.

Currently, Camilla is focusing on the fascinating Hungarian Liszt student and eccentric Josef Weiss (Weisz/Weiß). She first encountered his outstanding playing in 2016 when her Bern research group was notified that his long-lost piano rolls with the Liszt b minor sonata resurfaced in a roll collection at the University of Frankfurt. She is now working on making his scattered and fragmentary estate and his recordings accessible to a wider circle of musicians and scholars. A second topic she is working on is the transfer of Brahms’ music and piano performance practice to the US at the turn of the centuries.

Personally, the most important element of this research on 19th century interpretation practice is her constant experimentation at the instrument and the incorporation of stylistic means into her own performance practice.