Johann Baptist Streicher: Austrian piano maker

Streicher learned the piano making craft from his parents, Nannette Streicher and Johann Andreas Streicher who were well-known German-Austrian piano makers. He became a partner in the family business in 1823. Composer Johannes Brahms owned one of the Streicher's pianos and was very fond of it. He expressed his admiration in a letter to a German pianist Clara Schumann: "There [on my Streicher] I always know exactly what I write and why I write one way or another”. In 1896 Streicher's son, Emil, sold the family business to the brothers Stingl. Since the end of the XX century the interest in period instruments have been growing, and contemporary piano makers started creating replicas of Streicher's pianos.