Muzaffar Shah, a London-based piano restorer and collector, knew his life wouldn’t be complete without one particular piano. While abroad during the auction, he dropped everything to place his bid over the phone. When he secured the historic 1921 Pleyel once owned by Alfred Cortot, he described his feeling in a single word: “ecstatic.”

This piano carries within it a lineage of artistry and elegance. Pleyel pianos are woven into music history itself. Frédéric Chopin called them “the last word in perfection,” praising their slightly veiled, whispering sonority that sang with tenderness rather than force. Chopin loved his Pleyel so deeply that he travelled with it everywhere, including Mallorca with his lover, George Sand. Even when their romance crumbled, his Pleyel returned to Paris, still carrying echoes of his nocturnes.

This 1921 Pleyel, born in the golden age of French piano-making and cradled under Cortot’s poetic touch, has now been lovingly restored in London. Its revival is part of a broader renaissance, as Pleyel re-emerges in the piano world, combining historic craftsmanship with modern technology to recreate the signature sound that once illuminated Chopin’s music like moonlight.

Each key pressed on this Pleyel connects today’s pianists to centuries of music, memory, and timeless beauty. These instruments do not simply play notes – they tell stories. The soft, golden voice of Cortot’s Pleyel has returned, ready to sing once again, reminding the world that true beauty never fades – it only waits for the right hands to awaken it.