A new Beltrami accordion for Ben de Souza

Beltrami Accordion model CVC5

Yes, his Beltrami accordion has arrived! Currently in his second year at the Royal Academy of Music Ben de Souza spent his gap year converting from a classical  piano accordion to the more compact classical button accordion.  He also spent some time in Italy learning how to tune and repair accordions with Beltrami in Stradella.  It was then that he decided to design his future instrument and trust its construction to Claudio Beltrami.  A year and half on, and incorporating many special requirements that Ben specified to obtain the sound he was looking for a very excited Ben went to collect his accordion.

His Beltrami CVC5 accordion is a little larger than the Jupiter he was borrowing from the RAM.  It has an extra set of reeds in the left-hand being of the 8′ + 8′ + 2′ configuration with all combinations possible rather than the register-free Jupiter’s 8’+ 8′ configuration. His right-hand boasts a piccolo reed that goes all the way up to F above top C on the piano and amazingly it really can be heard by humans and rather well to boot.  It’s not played-in yet of course but I heard him play it and it has the most amazing sounding cassotto I have heard in a long time.  I want to eat the sound it makes! There are a number of other options Ben chose to incorporate but I shouldn’t give too many of his secrets away and I’m not talking about his real mother of pearl buttons!  Can’t wait to hear how it develops over the next 18 months or so.  As a player he has come along so quickly too and it’s amazing that only two years ago we were doing the very first exercises on buttons when I hear him now play Bach and Scarlatti even better than he did on his lovely old Beltrami CVP4c piano accordion which he is selling to fund this accordion.

Romano Viazzani