Gershwin: The Piano Rolls: Press Confusion
By Karl Petersen
I am forwarding email sent on 10/4 to Bob & Bill whose radio program is heard on NPR, at bmorelock@mpr.org. You can see I am beating on them in an inexcusable pedantic way for misattributing an Artis Wodehouse recording as a freshened-up original Gershwin acoustic recording. I didn't seem to get the point across, since today (10/25) they presented an apparently electronically edited acoustic recording as an electronically engineered re-recording of Kickin' the Clouds Away. Oh well, I hope I am listening accurately, but their program comes on right in the middle of the workday....
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Subject: Gershwin--The Piano Rolls
Author: Karl Petersen at Preco
Date: 10/4/95 8:43 AM
I usually assume you guys are being cute when you give out outrageous obvious misinformation, but this was not clear yesterday. The recording you played Tuesday was not a "direct" "live" pre-1937 acoustic recording of Gershwin's playing.
On the off chance you are not aware of the idiom and the availability of titles, there are literally thousands of pre-1930 performances of popular and classical piano performances which you can hear without scratchy surface noise because they were "digitally recorded". Every new wave of audio recording medium gets its rash of new releases of these old recordings, since each successive "hi-fidelity", stereophonic, audio tape, AAD,ADD,DDD CD mode, will offer improved results from the original recordings which sound as clear today as they did in 19XX when they were originally played. Special colorings based on room acoustics and piano quality can also be applied to the new recordings. Want to hear Wanda Landowska play the harpsichord on CD? I have recordings of her playing Mozart. Sorry, Mozart did not record for the medium himself, but a great number did who missed getting their grooves in wax.
The art vs. technology arguments can point out flaws in the process: George G.'s agogic accents got muddled in the first half of Rhapsody in Blue for Duo-Art; musicologists wonder how Josef Lhevinne, while a fine Julliard instructor and concertizer and a lack-luster disc recording artist, somehow surpassed the playing of Rubenstein on the Ampico recordings.
Even the "straight" player piano rolls, when "assisted" in attack, tempo and other accent by an experienced technician, give surprisingly credible recreations of original technique.
Since your forte' is clearly in the side-aisles of musicology, this should be one to pursue. If you don't have studio space and budget to do it directly (there are well-restored instruments even in Minnesota, if you contact the AMICA organization to find out), there are many recordings and enthusiasts who would direct you to more info and analysis of the field, the artists, the recordings and the technology. |
(Message sent Wed 25 Oct 1995, 20:38:54 GMT, from time zone GMT-0600.) |
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