Andrea Restelli

After completing his diploma at the Civic Luthier School of Milan, where he was born in 1961, Andrea Restelli has specialised in the making of harpsichords, pianos and clavichords. In 1992–1994 he studied fortepiano construction and restoration under the master Christopher Clarke at the Bartolomeo Cristofori Academy in Florence.

Musical instruments

In over 30 years of work he has made some 80 keyboard instruments, including a positive organ, 10 copies of Graf, Fritz, Silbermann and Dulcken pianos, around 60 double-manual harpsichords, all copies of various French (Goujon, Taskin, Donzelague, Tibaut, Stehlin), German (Mietke, Zell, Oesterlein, Specken, Vater) and Dutch (Dulcken, Delin, Ruckers) models, various copies of single-manual Italian models, and five clavichords. He has also restored a number of fortepianos, the most important of which was a Johann Fritz piece dating to circa 1814 in 1993–1996, of which he built two copies, in 2009 and 2012.

Restelli made his first fortepiano in 1996, a copy of a 1749 Gottfried Silbermann instrument for Lorenzo Ghielmi, a second in 1999 for Katia Labeque, and another two in 2014. He has also built copies of the Conrad Graf fortepiano—the first person in Italy and among very few in the world to craft instruments of this kind. Many of his instruments are owned by leading musicians in Europe and Japan and are frequently used for recordings and live concerts. Others are owned by public institutions, such as the Catholic University of Milan and the conservatoires of Genoa and Como.

Honours and Exhibitions

  • 1999
    Featured in “Les Journees du Piano-Forte”, Dardagny Castle (Switzerland).
  • 2000 e 2001
    European tours of the ensemble Il Giardino Armonico and Katia and Marielle Labeque.
  • 2002, 2004 e 2006
    Active participant in the first three seasons of the conference “Les Rencontres Harmoniques” at the Lausanne Conservatoire in Switzerland, where he exhibited his instruments and gave addresses on the construction of keyboard instruments, all published in the proceedings of the conferences.