Spencer Chase <wspencer@MAIL.TELIS.ORG> said:-

> I so completely disagree with Rick Pargeter's assesment of the
> Gershwin CD that I can't help but write.  I don't own the second
> and would not accept it if offered as a gift.  I was given the
> first by a fellow piano collector as a joke. It is music like
> this that gives reproducing pianos a bad name.  After the
> midi-izing and the editing there is not a shred of the original
> music left.

One of these days I must get round to buying one of these danged
new-fangled Compact Disc players. People seem reluctant to give
them away when they're tired of them.

So I have no CDs, but have heard tracks from this set several
times. The effect to me is of reproducing rolls reduced to
hand-played and then played with a modicum of skill on a pumper
connected to a very new grand piano. In other words, if you know
the originals, an overall disappointment but not a total disaster.
I sometimes hear original records of GG playing on BBC Radio 3
(the classical channel here) and often get caught out, thinking
this is a poor reproducer: he did have a surprisingly leaden touch.

The cause celèbre on this side of the water is the Nimbus project
to produce a lot of Duo-Art replays using the push-up built by
Gordon Iles (late of Universal Music Co at Hayes and then Artona
Music Rolls) in the 1970s, on a Steinway. Some of these tracks are
quite acceptable and some are just plain awful, compared to a
performance by an original instrument. The problem was noted by
plenty of keen listeners when the push-up was new: it's much too
literal in its interpretation of Duo-Art codes, snapping from
level to level like an Ampico when the old machines had an
exponential delay characteristic which the roll editors allowed
for. Because the piano is such a fine one, it just sounds to the
ignorant but musical listener as if everything has been got right
except the reproducing system which must therefore be
intrinsically inadequate. If a well-known record company like
Nimbus can get it this wrong, one despairs of ever getting
reproducing piano CDs right.

Dan Wilson