Hi everyone,  After reading the items on roll artistry not really being
what it was supposed to, I do feel a bit cheated.

I think we all accept that the reproducing rolls were "tampered with",
this would be logical for any company to try and improve and I'm sure
the artists would like to fine tune their work too.

I don't really expect the rolls to be totally hand played, after all
the end result is where the aim was.

But I do feel cheated if the roll says "played by ...." and that person
never even walked into the studio!  I expect that if a roll says
"played by Hofmann" at least he should push the keys down.

This is definitely false advertising, which seems to be rife in that
era (just look in the treasury!) and I imagine would not happen today
(??) Well, perhaps not so blatantly anyway.

But how common was this?  Excluding all of the aliases of course.
Did Paderewski play all his rolls?  How about Hofmann, Bauer, Grainger,
Cortot, Godowsky?  These were the high-profile star artists of the era.

More recently, how about the QRS celebrity series, was that Liberace
I heard? or even Roger Williams?

Was this more common with certain companies and not others?

Learning all the time
Peter Coggins
Australia