Beethoven’s Anglo Broadwood piano and a Viennese Graf piano.³⁰¹ A central difference in these pianos was the contrasting actions, the Broadwood exhibiting the Anglo-German action, and the Graf the Viennese action. The report of the audience reaction favoured the local Viennese instrument, though in the review it was added that Beethoven’s Broadwood piano was in a very worn down condition, these being the years of Beethoven’s developing deafness, and subsequently he was wearing out his pianos with increasingly powerful playing in his efforts to hear them. Moscheles was a pianist of the Viennese school³⁰² , implementing a pianism of lighter musical aesthetic in the tradition of Mozart, which suited the Viennese design. The Anglo Broadwood piano presented a greater potential for legato and sustain, with a more comprehensive dynamic range, characteristics apparent in the piano music of Beethoven.

In the 19th Century, at the onset of iron frames replaced the wooden frames, the resulting tone was described both as being ‘hard’ and ‘metallic’³⁰³ , and as sounding wonderful both in ‘power and mellowness’ ³⁰⁴

Another historic piano comparison concert occurred in 1856, when pianist Sigismond Thalberg performed on both the new American Chickering piano and the legendary French Erard, which he travelled with whilst touring America. America’s first influential classical music critic John Sullivan Dwight reviewed this comparison, revealing aspects of American advancements in tuning stability, as well as descriptions of tone.

To our ears there is still a purely musical quality in the Erard tone, which has not quite been reached by others. Forced to loudest effects, they sound a little antique and metallic, particularly in the middle and treble octaves: yet the quality is still musical, the altissimo tones exquisitely so, the bass magnificently rich. The Chickering tones are rounder, mellower throughout the whole compass, but they come to the ear less distinct, as if the tone were not refined to its purely musical element…. It is said the Chickering instruments stand in tune the best. ³⁰⁵

Arthur Loesser writes that Sigismond Thalberg also performed a comparison concert of Pleyel and Erard pianos. ³⁰⁶

³⁰¹Seth A.Carlin, “BEETHOVEN,LUDWIG (1770-1827)” in 8Palmieri, 46.
^{302     6}Schonberg,23-24. original source: Johann Hummel A complete Theoretical and Practial Course of Instruction in the Art of Playing the Piano Forte(London: T.Boosey,1827).
^{303     17}Good, 150.
^{304     18}Good, 150.
^{305     19}Good, 224. ; source: Dwight’s Journal Of Music (Boston:1851-1881) Sydney Conservatorium of Music library P 780.5 RIP 8.6 (Indexes)
^{306     6}Loesser, 407.