Richard Fuller on Haydn's piano: CD due for November release Vienna, Austria.

Washington native, fortepianist, recording artist, publisher, editor and music scholar Richard Fuller has recorded four piano sonatas of Joseph Haydn on a fortepiano of the period played by Joseph Haydn. Fuller, the son of Alfred and Georgette Fuller of Leavenworth, attended Wenatchee Valley College, Central Washington University, the University of Oregon, taught at Linfield College between 1973 and 1982 and has lived in Austria for the past 25 years, researching the music of Haydn, Mozart and their contemporaries as well as performing their music on historical pianos. The CD will be released on the Gramola, Wien label later this year, commemorating the 200th anniversary in 2009 of Haydn's death.

The instrument used for the recording is housed in Haydn's birthplace, now a museum, in Rohrau, Lower Austria, about 50 miles east of Vienna . The instrument was restored to playing condition in 2003 and Fuller has performed regularly on the instrument since that time. The instrument, built in 1782, was used for performances by Haydn as late as 1800, according to records in the archives of the province of Lower Austria. The piano bears unmistakeable similarities to several of the most significant surviving instruments built by Anton Walter (among them, the so-called "Mozart-Piano" in Salzburg and and a second piano known to have been used by Haydn in the castle at Eisenstadt (Burgenland).

In addition to a series of performances dedicated to the complete piano sonatas of Haydn performed on Haydn's piano in 2009, Fuller is musical director of "...einfach Haydnisch..."" , a project emphasizing Haydn's piano, chamber and vocal music. Fuller performs this coming January at Southern Oregon University in Ashland and in the Tri-Cities with the Austrian violinist Maria Bader-Kubizek with whom he has also recorded a CD of violin sonatas by Mozart using both the original J.A. Stein fortepiano and the "Leopold-Mozart violin" once owned by Mozart's father and now in the instrument collection of Vienna's Art History Museum (KHM).