Content area
Full text
Donald Manildi
GARY A GALO(EDITOR)
Naxos 8.110677, 8.110678, 8.110679.
A full century after the reproducing piano appeared in the musical marketplace, these instruments -- and the roll ''recordings'' that are played by them -- continue to exert a strange fascination for a certain segment of the public. And for at least the last half-century, numerous LP and CD releases of roll reproductions have been issued, often accompanied by extravagant claims of authenticity. In addition, several radio broadcast series devoted to piano rolls have attained some degree of notoriety. The three Naxos CDs under consideration here are merely the latest in that long procession.
Credit for the invention of the reproducing piano generally goes to Edwin Welte of Germany. Welte and co-inventor Karl Bockisch (who was also his brother-in-law) devised
p.290
a rather complex electrically-powered pneumatic system involving perforated paper rolls that were intended to capture a given pianist's interpretation of a selected musical work. Playing a finished roll on a properly equipped instrument was said to offer listeners a reliable reproduction of the original performance. The early form of Welte's invention was a cumbersome device called a ''Vorsetzer'' (sitter-in-front). This large cabinet, essentially a robot pianist, housed a somewhat delicate mechanism driven by the roll. The Vorsetzer was positioned at the keyboard of a normal piano, and felt-covered ''fingers'' then set forth a reproduction of whatever performance was encoded on the roll. Later this device was superseded by a mechanism embedded in the piano itself. With a view toward the American market, the Welte firm soon established operations in the US and began to make its system and its rolls available under the ''Welte-Mignon'' imprint.
Many piano manufacturers of the day formed business associations with Welte or his competitors and promoted reproducing pianos of various shapes and sizes to the public. Welte's main competitors were the Aeolian Company, which issued rolls under the Duo-Art label, and the American Piano Company, whose Ampico rolls were also widely distributed. A number of smaller firms were also part of the scene, and within all the respective catalogs one could find almost any kind of music as well as the playing of nearly every eminent pianist of the day (not...