Re: historic recording materials

["Bill Troop" billtroop@xxxxxxxx]

Yes, very far OT, but to continue, I think it just as possible that Rachmaninoff said it as that someone caused him to say it. Why not? It's a perfectly plausible first reaction to the technology. We don't really get much of an idea of Patti from her very primitive records, but she is said to have exclaimed, after hearing them, 'Now I know why they love Patti!' When you say that recordings make ghosts of these artists I think you're right in the sense that the recording really is a special artefact (not necessarily fully explained by Sartre, by Benjamin), even when it is of a live performance. Technology can't be separated because the noise in an old recording can serve as a device to help focus attention on the performance in ways that we might not otherwise do, and modern noiseless recordings have their own constraints -- nobody really believes that CD audio captures everything that analogue does, yet it captures it sufficiently well that superior digital formats have as yet no traction. The piano roll remains unique for its ability to present an experience devoid of recording artefacts, but the piano itself is such a variable and changeable instrument ... and for whatever reason, I have always found piano rolls (including the latest iterations, like the Yamaha Disklavier system, which I have used) to be strangely devoid of human presence. If you take a technically pretty bad recording like the air check of the first movement of the Brahms first concerto with Horowitz and Walter (from 1936?7?8?) (on M&A) there is a kind of volcanic music-making going on that I don't think can be reproduced mechanically. I worry that my enjoyment of it is artificially enhanced by the noise, by the pathos of the missing sides, by the knowledge of the time and place in which it was made by persons who a very short time later (Paris) would not be allowed to play there . . . all of that is part of the experience. Yet all in all, I feel I know a lot about the performers from this, and I don't feel I know anything about Mahler from his piano roll. Oh well, perhaps there are no answers in matters of this kind!


On Sun, Mar 9, 2008 at 10:24 PM, Raphael Tennenbaum mailto:raphael@xxxxxxxx wrote:



if you're suggesting a copywriter put those words in Rachmaninoff's mouth, I'm not

going to argue.  nor do I think there is a better record of those pianists than the 78

legacy.  but I would say at the least some of those piano rolls are quite remarkable:

in the better ones, there is if not perfect reproduction, every sense of artistic

purpose.  (and of course, be sure you're judging from a live performance on a

reproducing piano, which is what they were called, rather than a recording of a

piano.) another thing that interested me was a sense of digital recording

forshadowed.



that the

>poorest acoustic recording gives a far superior idea of a pianist's work

>than the best reproduced mechanical player.



that I'm not so sure about.  I might even go so far as to argue that the enterprise of

recording music has to some degree made ghosts of all these artists, however we'd

like to believe otherwise.



apologies for going so far OT for this list -- but consider how much of what we

hear on CD is reconstituted -- played in studios to begin with, with sections

frequently (usually?) recorded over, even for purported "live" recordings, taken 17

times, individual notes corrected, let alone digitized all over in the end -- a case

could very well be made that recorded music is altogether sui generis and bears

little relation to a pianist's work.  I can name at least half a dozen recording stars

whose recitals proved embarrassing disappointments, and I'm sure you can too.  I

am thinking of one pianist in particular whose records I'd never give up -- but you

couldn't pay me to go hear him.





On Sun, 9 Mar 2008 21:29:56 +0000, Bill Troop wrote:



>As a pianist I can't take Rachmaninoff's remark very seriously. You need a

>microphone (or a horn) to capture Rachmaninoff's pianism. There is no player

>piano that can capture the ineffable lightness of his touch as he plays the

>acoustical version of the Spinning Song -- which by the way does not exist

>in a decent CD transfer that I know of -- you will have to listen to the 78s

>or a good LP transfer to get at the meat of it. (It's also famous for having

>required 17 takes -- for a three minute piece; the later electrical version

>is inferior.) (A good transfer, made from 78 to tape without doctoring, was

>used by James Irsay a decade or so ago for a show he did on WQXR.) There is

>so much more than simple pressure to the striking of a key . . . moreover,

>every piano is different, and every pianist adjusts his performance to the

>particular instrument. Not the least defect of player piano systems is that

>the reproducing instrument is unlikely to be one that the performer has

>heard. Yes, some sense of a pianist's dynamics and phrasing can be gleaned,

>but there is so much more to a pianist's performance than that,

>


>recording technology, the restoration and transfer technology, our listening

>equipment, etc. etc., even as what we hear live is different depending on

>where we are sitting in a hall or room. . . . . Horowitz was shrill in the

>front row of Carnegie Hall; limpid from the balcony. For whom was he

>playing? From whence should he be judged?

>

>On Sun, Mar 9, 2008 at 8:02 PM, flash mailto:flash@xxxxxxxx wrote:

>

≫ mailto:raphael@xxxxxxxx: ≪[Aeolian pianos] were a close to ideal

≫ synthesis of analog and digital: the pneumatic system particularly of

≫ the later pianos was quite sensitive, and phrasing essentially perfectly

≫ captured.  but it is a little weird to behold one of the old Aeolians

≫ thundering out a Cortot or Hoffman or Rachmaninoff performance, like a

≫ ghost playing a recital. ≫

≫

≫ Rachmaninoff was very impressed with the technology and made many

≫ recordings using the Aeolian recording piano. After having heard a

≫ playback of one of his performances, he once said, "I have just heard

≫ myself playing."

≫

≫ 

≫

≫

>