the impossible is possible, and who has the flexibility to learn from an instrument in order to extend his/her technique.⁴⁷

– Belinda Webster OAM. Tall Poppies Recordings.

Tall Poppies – Australia’s premier independent Record Label specialising in new and classical music by Australian composers and performers.48 Tall Poppies Symbol Fig.0.1

The new sound of the Stuart piano was initially made accessible to the public through the Tall Poppies recordings. The new recordings were highly interesting for pianists as the piano itself was not easy to access. At the time the first CD was launched only two Stuart pianos had been made.⁴⁹ Production of handcrafted pianos is never fast and Stuart pianos have had some difficulty in being a‘piano of choice’ for major concert venues in Sydney, ⁵⁰but for two exceptions. The Albert family’s first commissioned Stuart piano,christened ‘The Albert’, ⁵¹ was the resident piano in the Clancy auditorium in Kensington, Sydney for many years. And the Independent Theatre in North Sydney housed three Stuart pianos from the late 1990s until very recently.

From 1996 to 2007, a large proportion of the music recorded on the Stuart piano was composed by the most highly regarded Australian contemporary composers.The Mere Bagatelles(1996) CD a solo piano recording, presented bagatelles from a large cast of contemporary Australian composers including the pianist/composer Ian Munro. In this recording, many of Munro’s performances exhibited the new qualities of the Stuart sound. For example, the enhanced qualities of sustain in the middle and treble registers is clearly exhibited in first section of Carl Vine’s Five Bagatelles III.

Mere Bagatelles. 52CD Cover Fig.0.2

⁴⁷Belinda Webster, University of Newcastle, Source: Robert Constable archive ,1997. Stuart piano advertising material, accessed 8th Sept 2015.
⁴⁸Tall Poppies, http://www.tallpoppies.net/au/florey/researcher/working/main-content.html , accessed 8th Nov. 2016.
^{49     2}Ward, 227.
^{50     2}Ward, 7-9.
^{51     3}Ward, 227.
⁵²Mere Bagatelles. Ian Munro pianist. Recorded 1996. Tall Poppies TP080, 1996, Compact disc.