A little while ago I wrote something about a piano piece by Robert Schumann, in which he had instructed the player to play ‘con accurezza’ – with accuracy. It still seems an amusing little moment because of the questions it raises.

I came across another such moment the other day in a piece by Smetana called ‘Útěcha’ or ‘La Consolation’ from 1874-75. Over a fortissimo passage of repeated chords he writes the instruction ‘vibrato’ (see photo). Now, it is well known that the piano does not have a vibrato pedal or a possibility of playing ‘with vibrato’, though admittedly one sometimes sees pianists doing a kind of vibrato with their finger on a single melody note in an effort to intensify it, or at least give the illusion that it is intensifying. This, however, is not possible when playing a rapid passage of chords such as we have in the Smetana.

What did he mean by ‘vibrato’? Did he mean that the sequence of chords should give the impression of being ‘shaken’ out of the keyboard, a bit like the ‘Bebung’ or ‘trembling’ effect one sometimes finds in late 18th century keyboard music? On the clavichord, it’s possible to create such an effect by rocking the key up and down with a finger while the metal tangent is still in contact with the string. CPE Bach thought that this effect actually made the clavichord superior to the piano. But the early classical use of ‘Bebung’ was long before Smetana’s time, and by Smetana’s day the piano had been the reigning keyboard instrument for a long time.

So what did Smetana mean? I can only imagine that he had in mind a sort of excitable frisson, a kind of emotional vibrato. Or was he imagining a future piano which could produce such effects?