The Piano as a Keeper of Lost Voices

The Glass Room

This flow traces the piano’s changing role as domestic instrument, public performer, wartime remnant, and link between people separated by history.

increasing

Bearing strength in each event

decreasing

A Piano for the House A Piano for the House from "The Glass Room". Music Enters the Architecture A chosen instrument The Bösendorfer piano is placed in the Glass Room as part of the family’s cultural life.

A Piano for the House from "The Glass Room". Music Enters the Architecture A chosen instrument The Bösendorfer piano is placed in the Glass Room as part of the family’s cultural life.

Music Enters the Architecture A chosen instrument The Bösendorfer piano is placed in the Glass Room as part of the family’s cultural life. Liesel practices and the home hosts musical gatherings. Its sound gives the open room a human scale. A domestic voice The instrument is not just an expensive object. It carries rehearsals, performances, and the social life that makes the house feel inhabited.

The Housewarming Performances

Music Establishes the Room Public performance Miroslav Němec plays, then gives way to Vítězslava Kaprálová. The piano becomes the focus of a room otherwise defined by glass, chrome, and open space. The young composer’s performance suggests a future for the country’s cultural life. Sound and place Music fills a room whose surfaces reflect light but might otherwise seem abstract. The performance makes architecture a setting for human expression.

The Piano Survives the Seizure

An Object Left Behind The instrument remains The piano is not removed when the house becomes a biometric centre. Werner Stahl has it tuned and plays it, even as the room is filled with equipment for racial research. Its continued presence links the laboratory to the life of the former home. Sound against purpose The piano cannot undo the institution’s violence, but it preserves an incompatible trace of music within the space. Its survival makes the conversion feel less complete.

A Lost Duet A Lost Duet from "The Glass Room". Music Recalls a Marriage A piece with Hedda Stahl plays music he once performed with Hedda. The absent violin part becomes a sensation of the wife he has lost.

A Lost Duet from "The Glass Room". Music Recalls a Marriage A piece with Hedda Stahl plays music he once performed with Hedda. The absent violin part becomes a sensation of the wife he has lost.

Music Recalls a Marriage A piece with Hedda Stahl plays music he once performed with Hedda. The absent violin part becomes a sensation of the wife he has lost. The performance lets him speak of grief that he normally hides behind scientific language. A confession through sound The piano gives Hana access to the story of Erika and Hedda. It creates intimacy in the former home without absolving Stahl of his actions.

The Piano at the Museum The Piano at the Museum from "The Glass Room". A Surviving Witness An instrument in an empty room The piano remains as one of the few objects that connects the room’s different uses.

The Piano at the Museum from "The Glass Room". A Surviving Witness An instrument in an empty room The piano remains as one of the few objects that connects the room’s different uses.

A Surviving Witness An instrument in an empty room The piano remains as one of the few objects that connects the room’s different uses. Visitors and former occupants encounter it as both an artifact and an instrument capable of sound. Its presence evokes performances that are no longer recoverable. Memory through music The piano’s history links Liesel’s musical practice, public recitals, and Stahl’s private grief. It preserves an echo of lives that the museum cannot fully recreate.

During the design and furnishing of the home

At the opening gathering

During the Nazi centre’s occupation

During Hana and Stahl’s encounter

During the 1990 return