Kindersymphonie

On Sunday, March 22, 2026, the Bologna Music MuseumB will host Kindersymphonie - From Mozart to Cage, Bologna and the Curious Stories of Likely and Unlikely Instruments, a musical tour with Antonietta Loffredo, featuring a toy piano and toy instruments. In collaboration with the Department of the Arts - University of Bologna and Centro La Soffitta.

A guided tour… that turns into a concert!

With specialist Antonietta Loffredo, the halls of the Music Museum become a wonderful little theater where real instruments, toy instruments, and “unlikely” instruments respond to one another, converse, and playfully tease each other. A musical journey that weaves together history, imagination, and wonder, following that subtle thread that links Bologna to the most curious musical inventions, from Mozart to John Cage.

The star of the show is the so-called “Padre Martini spinet” (actually a rectangular piano built in Munich by Joseph Glonner in 1780), which comes to life in the Cinq pièces pour “La Musicienne” by Jaquet-Droz’s automaton: a poetic tribute to the very idea of music as a mechanical marvel. Beside it, without emitting a single sound but with an irresistible stage presence, stands the iron violin: a curious instrument rarely on display, built in 1803 by Carlo Negri and one of the symbols of the artisanal creativity and organological imagination that animates the museum.

The journey then comes alive with a small orchestra of toy instruments: toy trains, bells, tambourines, a toy piano, and tin robots that perform surprising and entertaining pieces.

From Romberg’s “Grande Symphonie Burlesque” to Reinecke’s hilarious “Kindersymphonie,” all the way to contemporary pieces for toy piano, the visit transforms into a lighthearted and irresistible musical celebration, yet one that always manages to convey something profound about the way we listen.

A traveling concert that—in keeping with the tradition of the Variazioni—does not merely “show” the instruments, but brings them to life, makes them speak, and—whenever possible—play.

To rediscover that music, even the most playful kind, can still amaze us like a new toy.