Rhapsody in Blue and Other Roll Concertos with Orchestra

Greetings to MMD! I think this is my first post, at the age of 74.
I know that I could get sucked in to discussions and never get any
work done, so I'm dipping my toes very carefully.

I'm currently working on a long article about player piano concerts,
covering both foot-pedalled and reproducing pianos. There were thousands
upon thousands between 1898 and the mid-1930s, so that I can't possibly
deal with them all, and I'm restricting myself to one or two particular
areas. One of my aims is to emphasize that the foot-pedalled player
piano was an instrument that was intended to cover every aspect of
music, and not just those styles that are popular nowadays, such as
ragtime, jazz, or Nancarrow and his followers.

Amongst other things I've been researching concerto-type concerts,
both with orchestral accompaniment and with organ or second piano, and
I'm very pleased to have found postings on MMD from Art Reblitz and
Bill Decker in this regard, both of them mentioning performances of
Rhapsody in Blue with conductors other than Newton Wayland or Michael
Tilson Thomas.

Interestingly, the first time Gershwin's solo roll appears to have been
used was in February 1926, at the Warfield Theatre in San Francisco,
with the "Super Soloists", conducted by Walt Roesner. I've not found
any mention in Music Trade Review or the newspapers of a similar roll
performance with instrumental accompaniment at Aeolian Hall in New York,
but if someone knows otherwise, I'll be only too happy to be corrected.

In the article I am also writing about foot-pedalled concertos, the
1902-03 concert season at the Aeolian Hall at 362, Fifth Avenue (the
season when that Hall was opened), and major concerts since the end
of the Second World War. In general I am also trying to identify the
backroom boys and girls, especially those from long ago, since their
names and backgrounds are all too often forgotten.

I know about most of the concerto-type concerts in modern times, I think
-- Australia and New Zealand, Belgium, Chicago, France, Germany, MTT,
Netherlands, Norway, Switzerland, UK, Wayland -- but there may be a few
that have escaped me.

If anyone knows anything outside these locations and conductors, I'd
love to hear about it, and especially to find out more about the 1962
Los Angeles Festival, when the roll of the first movement of Stravinsky's
Concerto for Piano and Winds was used, with Franz Waxman as conductor,
and Jakob Gimpel as pianist for the other movements. I'm guessing that
the player-piano expert in that case was probably Harold Powell, but
it's a little early for any reminiscences to have got into the AMICA
Bulletin.

It was a surprise for me to find several reproducing piano concertos
being broadcast in the 1920s, and in particular that Percy Grainger's
solo roll of the first movement of the Grieg [concerto] was part of
only the third outside broadcast of an orchestra in the world, via WJZ
in Newark in the summer of 1921. It was accompanied by the New York
Philharmonic and came from the now defunct Lewisohn Stadium in NYC.

A year later it was followed by the first movement of the Tchaikowsky,
again using rolls recorded by Grainger, and the concerto broadcasts
didn't stop there: in the autumn (fall) of 1927 Josef Hofmann's alter
ego played part of the Chopin First Piano Concerto with the Philadelphia
String Simfonietta over WEAF,  and in 1928 Australia became the first
country to broadcast a complete concerto, when the Melbourne University
Symphony Orchestra (which later became the Melbourne Symphony),
accompanied Grainger in the four rolls of the Tchaikowsky at Melbourne
Town Hall, conducted by the doyen of Australian music at that time,
Professor Sir Bernard Heinze, over 3AR.

My overall article will be for our Pianola Journal no. 27, and may
I remind folk that all previous issues (up to no. 26) are available for
free download at our Pianola Institute website, http://www.pianola.org/ 

Thank you to anyone who can help, and best wishes from the eastern side
of the Pond.

Rex Lawson - Pianola Institute
South London
http://www.pianola.org/