Excelsior with strange bass layout

[maugein96]

Whilst scanning You Tube for accordion music I came across the Italian virtuoso accordionist, Wolmer Beltrami, playing the Excelsior? CBA instrument youll see in the attached link. The whole clip is mimed, but what intrigued me was the bass button arrangement on the side of the accordion rather than on the front. I have never seen anything like it in my life although no doubt somebody on the forum will be able to tell us how and why the accordion was made that way. It would certainly appear that the accordion was a one-off constructed to his own specification, but on most occasions when I make these assumptions somebody proves me wrong.

A total master of the instrument, Beltrami was an inveterate show-off and was famous in his latter days for playing with no bellows straps in a seated position. His compositions nearly all featured high speed playing, and I dont think all that many players tried to copy his playing style, which was incredible. I wouldnt even think about trying to play any of his compositions unless I had been playing since I was 18 months old and had fingers like bungee cord!

In this clip he plays whilst strolling and that fact made me pay closer attention to what he was doing. I noticed the weird bass button arrangement, and hope somebody may be able to explain why the instrument was made like that.

 

[donn]

Interesting!

Picture of a younger (and rather sinister) Beltrami with a Fratelli Crosio in what looks to me like the same configuration. I bet a quarter the Excelsior was a one off custom job. Maybe the Fratelli Crosio too, but might have been a contemporary style.

 

[maugein96]

Found another photo of him playing a Farfisa with no bass buttons visible on the front, although you cant see the left side of the instrument. He does look as though he had just stepped off the stage of a horror play right enough.

I dont know very much about him at all, other than he was from the area to the north of Rome and he was once part of a accordion duet with Gorni Kramer, another Italian player from Milan, who also dabbled with other instruments. I seem to remember my late grandfather talking about Kramer and Beltrami, and I know that Beltrami at least was quite well known amongst older Scottish accordionists. I suppose the fact that he has been deceased for over 25 years will mean that relatively few forum members will have heard of him, but he was certainly some player, even if his style was not exactly to my liking.

 

[george garside]

I think what may be taken as bass buttons are simply the pattern of holes in the bass board. If I am correct it is a bass accordion i.e one with no bass!. the treble end is pitched much lower than normal , probably something like the left hand on a piano.

george

 

[donn]

You can see them real close up around 2:40. Theyre ordinary (not fungo) black buttons. The Fratelli Crosio buttons look not exactly like modern - they seem a little broader (but again without the fungo cap as best as I can see), and theyre light-colored with a dark dot in the top center. Theres a larger version of that image to be found online, that turned out to be impractical large to post here (and didnt really carry much more detail.)

 

[maugein96]

I should perhaps have done more research before I posted, as I found an Italian forum dedicated to CBA. One of its members apparently arranged an accordion exhibition, and the exhibits included a Farfisa accordion that Beltrami had specially made for him with the bass buttons on the side (possibly the one in my last post). He maintained that he could play the bass faster with the buttons arranged that way, but a couple of members then got into a debate about whether the basses were arranged in Stradella or Modenese (Belgian) fashion. They certainly look more like a Stradella type, but there do appear to be "extra" buttons.

In any case, his later instruments featured what appear to be standard Stradella bass buttons. He was a very prolific bass player and I doubt whether he would have switched from Stradella to another system when he specified the bass buttons on the side of the instrument. It would therefore seem that he went through a stage of having accordions made with his own spec bass buttons, before reverting to instruments with standard Stradella basses.

I had considered the Farfisa was maybe a bass accordion, George, although the only time I've ever seen one was in an accordion orchestra. I do know that the French player, Maurice Larcange (and probably others), had otherwise standard instruments made without bass buttons, solely for the purpose of recording. Precisely why that was the case was not explained in the text of the old French accordion magazine in which the article appeared. However, that was in the days when "Google translate" was a French dictionary book, and it might have been the case that I was unable to translate properly. I literally spent hours having to translate the lessons and info from French text and it all got a bit "heavy" at times. I did gain a lot of knowledge in the process, but sadly it never made me a better player!