The Cobbe Collection Trust
Anyone who has a love of classical piano music will at some stage have wondered how the sound of our modern pianos compares with the sound which the composers themselves enjoyed. Alec Cobbe collected the keyboard instruments at Hatchlands over a period of 30 years, with just that in mind.

The collection, now in the care of the Cobbe Collection Trust, consists of some 38 instruments, all maintained in, or brought into, playing order. Twelve of the instruments were actually owned or almost certainly played by famous composers such as Purcell, Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Chopin, Liszt, Mahler and Elgar - the largest group of such instruments to be seen in one place in the world. Also on view is Marie Antoinette's piano by Erard, one of the most beautiful square pianos to survive from the 18th-century, and a Viennese grand piano made for George IV by Nannette Streicher, Mozart’s pupil, loaned to the National Trust by Her Majesty the Queen.