HEARTFELT THANKS to all who contributed to our successful crowdfunding campaign to save this historic piano in celebration of Yaniewicz's musical legacy in Scotland. Plans are well underway for next year's exhibition, and we look forward to celebrating the piano's arrival in Edinburgh. If you would like to keep in touch with the project, please use the contact form on our website www.yaniewicz.org to join The Friends of Felix Yaniewicz.

This beautiful square piano dating from around 1810 was found twenty years ago in a shabby condition in a house in North Wales, by Douglas Hollick, a restorer of early keyboard instruments. The legs had been broken, and the decorative fretwork badly damaged, but the action was intact, and its potential for restoration was clear. Above the keyboard, the gilded label decorated with flowers and musical instruments, bears the names Yaniewicz & Green, with premises in fashionable addresses in London and Liverpool. Inside, it is signed in Indian ink, and the handwriting has been matched with the marriage certificate of Felix Yaniewicz (1762-1848), a Polish violin virtuoso and composer, who founded the first Edinburgh festival in 1815. Alongside the restoration project, new research into this fascinating but forgotten figure has revealed the remarkable story of a musical migrant who escaped political upheavals on the continent to make his home in Britain, leaving a lasting legacy for our musical culture.

Yaniewicz’s early career took him from Vilnius and the Polish Chapel Royal to Vienna, Italy and Paris, before he fled the French Revolution and came to Britain. Here he rose to fame as a performer, composer and impresario, thanks to his musical charisma and entrepreneurial flair. His performances were hailed as as ‘a perfect masterpiece of the art. In fire, spirit, elegance and finish, Mr Yaniewicz’s violin concerto cannot be excelled by any performance in Europe’. In 1815 he moved to Scotland, where he would spend the rest of his life, and co-founded the first Edinburgh music festival.

While Yaniewicz’s violins (a Stradivarius and an Amati) have disappeared without trace, we have an opportunity to save this unique and beautiful piano bearing his name. The Friends of Felix Yaniewicz are crowdfunding to purchase this historic instrument, and to bring it to Edinburgh as the centrepiece of an exhibition about his life and music at the Georgian House museum in 2022. The exhibition will celebrate his legacy as a musical migrant who triumphed over political adversity and flourished in Britain as a shaping force in the musical culture of his day.

Beyond the exhibition, the piano will be kept at the Polish House on Drummond Place in Edinburgh, where its connection to Yaniewicz will continue to be celebrated with an annual recital in his name.

Donors are invited to join The Friends of Felix Yaniewicz to receive updates on the project. Membership is free.