An Introduction

"The great virtue of this wonderful instrument is ... its quality of revealing the personality of the pianist. It will preserve for later generations the art of the great pianists ..."

So wrote Sydney Grew in 'Musical Opinion', February 1924, a time which has been described as the heyday of the Reproducing Piano. He closed his article with the following words;

"I consider the Duo-Art one of the most wonderful inventions of modern times. By mechanical means it reproduces with a full measure of character and individuality the personal art of great pianists. The reproduction seems to be not a copy but the original"

High praise indeed for an invention less than 12 years old which was to disappear almost completely in less than ten. Where had it come from and where did it go?

Before answering these questions it is necessary to make an important distinction. Up until 1904 there existed pianolas and player pianos. From as early as 1890 in the United States there had been machines which via the use of a perforated roll had in some way or another played pianos. These player pianos could play the notes, operate the pedals and accent notes. Speed and volume were dependent upon the operator or 'player pianist'. In 1904 the Welte-Mignon company in Germany developed and manufactured the Reproducing Piano. Like the pianola it played the piano but had the major advantage over its predecessor of being able to incorporate the 'touch' and 'feel' of the pianist. No longer was there any need for a human player to control speed and volume, with the Reproducing Piano these two variables were incorporated in the perforations of the roll. This was a significant and important development and constitutes the important difference between player pianos and Reproducing Pianos.

Welte-Mignon did not have the market to themselves for long and in 1912 and 1913 the Ampico and Aeolian Duo-Art systems appeared in America. During a period of under twenty years the Reproducing Piano came and went. During its peak year of 1925 more than 192,000 instruments were manufactured by the Aeolian company in the USA with a total sales value in excess of $59 million. With revenues like this the Aeolian company was able to refine and perfect its recording technique and also record some of the greatest pianists of the time. So what went wrong? Between 1927-1928 the roof collapsed on Aeolian and all the other piano and player piano manufacturers as a result of three things. Firstly the advent of radio networks shifted the whole emphasis of domestic entertainment especially with regard to music making. Secondly the gramophone made significant strides in both disc quality and sound quality. Electrical recording was a massive improvement upon the old acoustic process. Thirdly, Al Jolson sang! The talkies hit the public and people flocked to the picture houses as the golden age of cinema began. As if this was not enough the following year saw the stock market crash of 1929 which just about finished off the Reproducing Piano. Rolls were issued in smaller and smaller numbers, prices plummeted and the last Duo-Art roll was issued in England in 1939. Since then piano rolls have generally been looked upon as mildly amusing side shows in the history of sound recording, largely due to the fact that players had not been maintained to proper operating standards and consequently the sound they reproduced appeared mechanical and unrealistic.

However during their heyday no lesser critic than Ernest Newman writing in 1927 sang the praises of the Duo-Art system following a concert given in London during which the great pianist Cortot played "live" alongside a Duo-Art recording he had made. Newman was unable to distinguish between the piano roll and the real thing. "Now and again I would say to myself: 'This is Cortot' or 'This is Duo-Art,' but on opening my eyes I found myself as often wrong as right"

Interviewed about his Duo-Art recordings the great Leopold Godowsky enthused thus; "It is a truly remarkable experience to hear the Duo-Art mirror in every essential quality of tone and expression the Fantaisie (Chopin Fantaisie in F minor) as I played it a week ago! To think this same performance will be heard in thousands of homes, years hence - just as I played it at Aeolian Hall!"

After a space of more than 60 years it is now possible to hear again on compact disc such great pianists as Godowsky, Paderewski, Busoni, Hofmann and Bauer as they sounded when they were at the height of their performing powers. Thanks to the expertise of Gerald Stonehill who owns the largest collection of Duo-Art piano rolls in the world, Nimbus Records is privileged to be able to present the Grand Piano Series.

The aim of this unique series is to bring before the public the art of the great pianists who preserved their interpretations, genius and performing style through the process of making piano roll recordings for the Aeolian Duo-Art company. Many significant artists never made gramophone records or in the case of Busoni made very few and hated doing so! But they did make reproduction piano rolls. Thanks to Mr Stonehill and the late Gordon Iles, inventor and chief theoretician of the Aeolian company in England, it is now possible better to reproduce piano roll recordings made for the Aeolian company as long ago as 1914. This has been achieved through the design and creation of a 'Robot' which incorporates the ultimate Duo-Art technology in order to deliver historic performances exactly as heard and approved by the recording artists themselves.

What makes Nimbus' Grand Piano series unique stems from the technical ability of the 'Robot' accurately to reproduce the nuances of the original performances, at concert levels. Duo-Art rolls feature a special set of perforations along both edges of the roll which can control up to 16 different intensities of hammer stroke. This, alongside the ability to vary the volume and intensity of the melody independently of the accompaniment and also independently of the sustaining and soft pedals, creates a series of tonal intensities and gradations beyond the capacity of the human ear to distinguish. Put simply this system does not sound like a machine playing a piano - it sounds like a live pianist. Not only that but because it is so accurate we can distinguish one pianist from another. Consequently this series enables us to hear a style of pianoism which is long dead but which has its roots in the great composer-performers of the Romantic era. So, for example we are able to hear a recording of one of Liszt's Grand Etudes de Concert from a roll made in 1924 by Frederic Lamond who at the age of seventeen was taken to study with Liszt in Weimar.

All the recordings in the Grand Piano series have been made at the Concert Hall of the Nimbus Foundation using a Steinway Grand. All recordings are fully digital. There are no extraneous noises no mechanisms whirring, no levers squeaking, just pure, amazing piano playing. Accompanied by expert notes and biographies of the featured pianists the Grand Piano series promises to be one of the most enlightening and stimulating series of piano recordings ever!