Summary

I am a pianist and musicologist working at the intersection of performance, research, and historical reconstruction. My work brings together scholarship and live performance in ways that are rarely combined especially in the high Romantic century: lecture-recitals, historically informed recordings and fashion, and large-scale research projects centered on nineteenth-century pianism.

Following a recent series of major performances and new invitations, I am now building the next phase of this work — but I am doing so while navigating significant material setbacks and structural limitations.

This fundraiser supports both immediate artistic projects and the infrastructure needed to sustain them.

Recent setbacks

Over the past months, I have experienced multiple equipment losses, including the theft of essential recording tools (microphones and related materials), as well as a shockingly unexpected theft of specialized pedagogical equipment. This includes my original archival reconstruction of Henri Herz’s “dactylion” finger-strengthening device, which was a specialized and high-cost project resulting from institutional research funding. This object has been the foundation of countless performances and recordings which I hope to be able to continue, and I cannot do it without replacing it. Overall, these are not just easily replaceable objects, but part of the technical foundation required to document and share my work.

Rebuilding this infrastructure is essential to continuing at a professional level.

Building a recording studio

To sustain my work independently, I am building a small but high-level recording setup. This will allow me to produce professional recordings, videos, and research outputs without relying entirely on external funding and venue structures.

Studio costs:

• Audio interface: $2,799

• Replacement for stolen microphones: $1,200

• Additional microphones (for professional piano recording): $2,500

• Cables and accessories: $200

Subtotal: $6,699

This setup will support not only the projects below, but a wide range of future recordings and publications.

Project 1: Liszt – Harmonies poétiques et religieuses

Following recent performances of Liszt’s Harmonies poétiques et religieuses — one of his most philosophically and technically demanding works, and a piece underplayed in its entirety — I am preparing a professional recording on a Steinway.

This piece has become central to my work: a cycle that confronts mortality, transcendence, and the limits of embodiment through sound. My recent performances have opened a new interpretive direction that I want to preserve and develop through recording, and a homemade recording will help me break into the market of recording labels and function as a serious and resonant calling card.

Costs:

• Engineering & production: $1,500

• Travel to recording venue: $500

• Lost wages (time off teaching to record): $1,000

Subtotal: $3,000

Project 2: Montgeroult – Recording & Critical Edition

I am currently developing a large-scale project on Hélène de Montgeroult’s Cours complet d’enseignement du forte piano (c. 1816) — a monumental and historically overlooked pedagogical treatise and collection of etudes.

This project combines:

• A complete recording of the études on historical instruments published through Cornell University Press

• An accompanying critical edition and English translation of the work

Montgeroult’s method predates and reshapes canonical traditions (Clementi, Cramer), yet remains largely inaccessible. This project restores her work both sonically and intellectually, making it available to performers and scholars for the first time at this scale. This would also be the first professional recording of her thrilling work on historical keyboards from her time at Cornell’s Center for Historical Keyboards.

Costs:

• Lost wages (2 weeks off for recording): $2,500

• Travel to recording location (Ithaca): $1,500

(Engineering and equipment is covered for this project).

Subtotal: $4,000

Dactylion Reconstruction

As part of my research on nineteenth-century pianistic technologies, I previously reconstructed the dactylion, a historical finger-training device used to discipline and mechanize pianistic technique. That reconstruction was later stolen.

Since then, I have located the original patent, which reveals details that were not available to me at the time of the first build.

This creates a unique opportunity:

to produce a new, more accurate prototype that more precisely matches the historical design.

This reconstruction is not only a research object, but a performative and pedagogical tool that directly informs my work on embodiment, technique, and the material history of pianism.

Estimated cost:

Raison d’être (why this matters)

Having my own recording infrastructure and restored equipment allows me to continue developing a body of work that does not fit neatly into existing institutional categories.

This includes:

• Recordings of Liszt, Brahms, and major Romantic repertoire

• Projects on underrepresented composers such as Hélène de Montgeroult, Sophie Menter, and Marie Jaëll

• Historically informed performances on period instruments and “accessories” such as the dactylion

• Professionally produced video and lecture-recital formats

This work already exists and is growing — this support allows it to become sustainable and visible.

Selected Past Work

Examples of my work include:

• Liszt “Tableau Vivant” Performance (Barnes Hall, Cornell University)

This recording project was conceived as an experiment in tableau vivant staging, inspired by Josef Danhauser’s painting “Liszt at the Piano.” The performance of Liszt’s solo piano transcription of “Totentanz” integrates historical staging, costume, and visual composition to evoke the atmosphere of nineteenth-century salon culture — including the presence of George Sand, whose portrait forms part of the scene.

The gothic visual language and full moon footage draws on Liszt’s own early inspirations — including visits to prisons and graveyards in Paris — shaping the work’s darker expressive undertones.

Performance, staging, video concept, and editing by Theodora Serbanescu-Martin. Recorded in Ithaca, NY (October 2021).

Audio engineering: Bruno Henrique Neves.

(link)

• Bellini/Liszt “Reminiscences de Norma” on historical Pleyel piano:

A historically informed performance exploring the keyboard transformation of operatic themes through nineteenth-century pianistic technique and interface-specific sonority.

(link)

• Brahms on Streicher piano

Performance of Brahms’s Op. 116 Klavierstücke on a Streicher keyboard like the type he had in his apartment, engaging questions of touch, weight, and historical sound production.

(link)

• Dactylion Demonstration (historical reconstruction)

Video documentation of my earlier reconstruction of the nineteenth-century dactylion, a pedagogical device central to my research on mechanization, embodiment, and pianistic discipline.

(link)

Final Point

All of this is not a starting point but a continuation of work that I have invested in for decades.

Your support helps stabilize a body of work that is already actively unfolding, allowing it to move from fragile momentum into lasting form.

Thank you for being part of this process.