Dan Wilson alerted me to an article on the New York Times web site,
dated December 15, 1996, by author Edward Rothstein, which tells about
the radio broadcasts titled "Earwitness" on the nationally syndicated
WFMT Fine Arts Network.  New York station WNYE carries the program on
Monday evenings at 10 PM through January.

In the current series the host, Harold C. Schonberg, a former chief music
critic of The New York Times, is conducting a survey of reproducing-piano
performances appearing on audio records.

Because the article is protected by copyright I can't reproduce it in the
Digest in full; I can only quote partial paragraphs.

The audio recordings featured on the radio program come from Mr. Don W.
Fostle, "who became interested in historical performances while writing
'The Steinway Saga,' his imposing history of the piano firm."

The show's underwriter, Madrigal Audio Laboratories, will soon have
available in its stores a two-CD set of highlights from the  recording
series.

I don't think the Times will mind if I quote the closing paragraph, which
alludes to modern CD recording techniques used to record the Duo-Art:

"This meticulous attention to detail brings these intermeshing machines
as close as they can get to music; it is sleight of technology if not
of hand.  There is an illusion that something, or someone, is being
resurrected, and not just a mummy wrapped in rolls of punctured paper.
In a few of these performances, the ridiculous almost becomes sublime."

This article is at the The New York Times web site as

      http://www.nytimes.com/yr/mo/day/artleisure/15roth.html


What raises my hackles is the author's view of reproducing pianos:

"Often, of course, the sonic artifice of reproducing pianos is evident:
overstressed musical punctuation, narrowed ranges of timbre and dynamics,
terraced and aggressive phrasing."

He says that in the Duo-Art rolls presented, "the infinitely refined
gestures of a great instrumentalist are broken into discrete bits of
information: the earliest form of digital audio."

I solicit comments from the Digest readers on these two questions
raised as I read the article:

  1. What characteristic of old Duo-art audio recordings would cause
     Mr. Rothstein to conclude that most Duo-Art pianos are faulty?

  2. How do the old recordings compare with the new CD produced by
     Mr. Don W. Fostle?

Robbie Rhodes