What's a Reproducing Piano?

[jerfilm]

ALan, if you think this is irrelevant to the forum, feel free to delete it.....

Since there haven't been any comments regarding the Ignaz Friedman performances I uploaded last week, I'm wondering if some folks aren't put off by the fact that they are from "piano rolls".   We all know how klunky and mechanical player pianos are.  Mostly not worth listening to.  But these are a whole different animal - for the reproducing piano and if you aren't familiar with the difference, I offer the following Reproducing Pianos 101.   I wrote this 7 years ago for my kids.

There were a lot of wondrous inventions that changed the way folks lived in the latter years of the 19th century – the steam locomotive, internal combustion engine, telephone, photography, phonography, light bulb – the list goes on and on.  One of the most amazing, in my humble opinion, was the Player Piano.  Complex mechanically but a simple idea, it brought "real" music into the homes of millions around the world. 

But the player piano had one major drawback.  You could always tell a player piano because there was no expression.  No dynamics.  Klunky, Mechanical. Oh yes, you could press a button and activate the "soft" pedal.  In fact, many piano rolls had markings on them to instruct the pumper when to activate it.  But, it was either loud or soft: no in-between.

But it wasn't long before someone else came along and invented a mechanism that not only reproduced the notes, but also the nuances – the dynamics.  A GIANT step forward.  And these were called reproducing pianos.  They were marketed mainly by three companys – American Piano Company – AMPICO for short, Duo Art and Welte in Germany.  They were very expensive and generally only installed on more expensive instruments – mostly grand pianos.  Thus, most folks never heard of them.  Or if they did, they thought them to be just another player piano.  How wrong THAT was!

With this marvelous invention, it was now possible to convince major pianists to come in and cut rolls.  And cut they did.  Most of the famous artists of their time made reproducing rolls.  And they were in their PRIME at the time – Lhevinne, Hofmann, Artur Rubinstein, Paderewski, Iturbi, Schnabel, Levitski, Horowitz, Friedman, Carl Reinecke – another list that goes on and on.  But even more remarkable, the roll makers were able to convince some of the leading composers – both popular and classical – to cut rolls of their own music.  Some, like Rachmaninoff (who was also a concert pianist, of course) and Walter Donaldson were prolific.  Others, such as Mahler, Debussy, Grieg and Ravel probably only did one "recording" session. 

Now, it's true that these are "recordings" - but they're not recordings in the same sense as a phonograph record, or magnetic tape or even a CD.  Each of those mediums takes the original performance, converts it to some form of mechanical (as in the case of a phonograph record) or electronic image.  What we hear, at least today, is a pretty accurate reproduction of the original performance – sometimes in "surround sound".  But the reproducing piano is THE actual instrument – not a speaker, or an amplifier or some other artificial reproducer.  So, when we put on a roll and play it through, it's as if Debussy himself walked into our living room, sat down at the piano and began playing for us. And that's what excites ME about it.....

Fast forward about 80 years.  The age of the computer.  Not many reproducing pianos around in restored, working condition.  But three guys – maybe more I haven't discovered – one in Australia, one in Winnepeg and one in California – invent a device to read reproducing rolls and convert the information to Musical Instrument Digital Interface (MIDI) files.  These files are exact reproductions of the original rolls and can be played on any piano capable of reproducing MIDI files – including pianos outfitted with devices such as the PianoDisc system.  Of course, they need not be a conventional piano – it can also be a digital piano such as our Technics Digital Ensemble.  The only difference being that with a stringed piano you can see the keys moving (like the old player piano) whereas that's not possible with a digital piano. 

And a word about the Technics Digital Ensemble.  In my opinion, the very best of the digital pianos available, sadly, Technics quit making them around 2005.  Probably the competition from the big guys in the business, Roland, Kurzweill, Korg, Yamaha – forced this decision.  But Technics was the only digital piano on the market at the time, at least, with the exclusive rights to sample the Steinway Grand Piano for it's grand piano sound.  Not klunky like most of the digital pianos, the Technics actually SOUNDS like a grand piano.....

So sit back and enjoy.  Hmmmmm – let's listen to George Gershwin playing his piano reduction of the Rhapsody in Blue.  Oh, and don't be surprised at the breakneck speed that he plays it.  Well, after all, it WAS HIS composition.......

Hope this is informative for some.

Jerry

[eschiss1]

hrm. I know of two kinds of reproducing piano sorts-of-things- piano rolls, and the kind that produced the result not as bars on paper, but as hardening residue in a sort of glop (that's not the exact word I mean, obviously!! resin is closer... preserving is the key word here)... is that ringing a bell? Trying to remember more specifically...

[jerfilm]

These would all be the paper rolls, Eric.  I'm not familiar with the others.

One thing I forgot to mention, the performances are really good on a digital piano (much better than my captures suggest, sorry to say).  But they really sound magnificent on a real piano.  Especially, of course, a large grand.  But here's the catch - I got a quote to add the Piano Disc system to our Steinway studio (several years ago, now) and the price was over $7000.  Only slightly less than the piano is worth!!   So hearing them as they were meant to be heard is difficult at best.   I believe a few of them are available on commercial CDs.

Jerry

[eschiss1]

May have misread the record label - I thought I saw a description of the process on an LP. Nothing about this alternate process that I thought I remembered on e.g. Wikipedia that I can see ...  though the articles on reproducing pianos and piano rolls are fairly large and contain information on a number of alternate methods, etc.

[semloh]

Since there haven't been any comments regarding the Ignaz Friedman performances I uploaded last week, I'm wondering if some folks aren't put off by the fact that they are from "piano rolls".......

Jerry

I enjoyed these, Jerry - apologies for not saying 'thanks' for uploading them. By the way, I know it's obvious but, a reproducing piano is one that meets a pianola and consequently produces a lot of little pianissimos.

[eschiss1]

Swedish Radio has a podcast (also available from their website) of older recordings (mostly sung music, with some Reger, Berwald, Stenhammar and others) - the piano music often being, not surprisingly ,from piano rolls- it's interesting to hear the difference in interpretation of a Beethoven sonata between Scharwenka (as pianist, rather than composer, in this context - same Franz Xaver Scharwenka we're speaking of, though) and any of a number of pianists since then, in my opinion. Some not-so-subtle differences and some subtle ones. (I think of his interpretation of the first movement of the E minor sonata particularly, which just seems to me to make a lot more sense in his hands- even with the restrictions of a piano roll. ... Apologies, ... I guess I said that already... but yes, he was a good pianist as well as composer, and it's nice to be able to have that evidence, I think.  Same with other turn-of-the-century composers playing their own and others' music who were good instrumentalists and interpreters and didn't live long enough for other recording technologies (when they were good at that, that is. Not claiming that it followed- I'm not a fool in that particular way )