Buy through MusicWeb for £7.00 postage paid World-wide.

Musicweb Purchase button

Buy through MusicWeb for £7 postage paid World Wide.

Musicweb Purchase button

Buy through MusicWeb for £7.00 postage paid World-Wide.

Musicweb Purchase button

Buy through MusicWeb for £7.00 postage paid World wide.

Musicweb Purchase button

Buy through MusicWeb for £7.00 postage paid World-wide.

Musicweb Purchase button

Buy through MusicWeb for £7.00 postage paid World wide.

Musicweb Purchase button

Buy through MusicWeb for £7.00 postage paid World-wide.

Musicweb Purchase button

Buy through MusicWeb for £7.00 postage paid World-wide.

Musicweb Purchase button

Buy through MusicWeb for £7.00 postage paid World-wide.

Musicweb Purchase button

 

I’ve reviewed quite a swathe of reproducing piano transfers in the last few years. Pierian, Tudor, Naxos and Dal Segno are some of the companies that have been issuing a tranche of Welte-Mignon and Duo Art recordings. Nimbus’s extensive series is devoted to performances made for the Aeolian Duo-Art company. With due acknowledgement to Nimbus I think it might be pertinent to note here the thing that makes their transfers distinctive. Readers will know the vagaries inherent in the system and a cursory check of my numerous reviews will point to the many defects and limitations in some of the transfers of late. So now a few words about the ‘Robot’ from Nimbus …

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 pianism 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.

I can attest to the excellent quality of the transfers, to the lack of action noise, and to the fine room ambience. These are really fine sounding recordings. To what extent they accurately reflect the performances is an age-old conundrum that is usually answered in the negative. Some pianists were punctilious about their reproducing rolls, superintending the post-performance editing work – Harold Bauer I believe was one such – and others, such as Grainger, were sloppy, dashed off the roll and left.

What is always of value is, wherever possible, to compare and contrast performances from around the same time made on acoustic (or electric) discs and those for roll companies.  Cortot’s roll of Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsody was released in April 1919. He made an early electric recording of the same piece in 1926 in Camden, NJ – currently on Naxos - which is almost the same in terms of timing but very different as a performance. The disc has a sense of anticipation and tension devoid in the roll; dynamics are more sculpted on disc, pedalling is more authentic, and the range of colours more palpable. The roll is very much at one dynamic level, despite the boasts of natural dynamics whereas the tonal gradations are more scaled on disc.

Busoni is a famous case in point. This roll transfer of the Bach-Busoni Chaconne lasts 15:17 whereas others I’ve heard – less impressive transfers – have it at around 13:20. The disparity in transfer speed is another endemic problem. The A major Chopin Prelude [No.7] was released in roll form by September 1923 so it was probably recorded not so long after Busoni went into the studios to record it on disc, which he did in 1922 in London. The roll is more emphatic, less subtle, starker and frankly duller. The ebullient, slapdash, brilliant Grainger sounds inert in his roll of the ravishing Sussex Mummers' Christmas Carol. He made both a roll and disc recording of Stanford’s March-Jig (Maguire’s Kick), his arrangement of Stanford’s Four Irish Dances. Check out HMV 5569, recorded in 1908 and contrast it with this roll made by the end of 1916. You will immediately hear that despite the primitive 1908 sound Grainger infuses the piece with a wealth of rhythmically charged drama and dynamic variance. It’s exciting and powerful and exerts a tremendous charge. The roll is arthritic, devoid of dynamics and dull.

The appreciation that rolls are at best a simulacrum of performances can be appreciated in all these performances, valuable and fascinating though they are in their own terms. There are simply too many variables, too many intercessionary components between the original performance and its roll realisation. Try Backhaus’s recording of the Brahms Variations on a Theme of Paganini. He was clearly immersed in it in the mid twenties because first he recorded it on roll, probably towards the end of 1923 and then two years later made a disc recording for HMV. Once again the lack of verve on the roll is plain to hear. The subtlety of dynamics and pedalling especially in repeated passages on disc is not replicated on the roll.

These are constant refrains of course though the prospect of encountering rolls made by Madriguera and Schmitz (Debussy) shouldn’t be discounted. The Debussy disc in fact turns up one of his most august interpreters, George Copeland. His Clair de lune roll and disc bear little comparison, the latter having much more metrical freedom and rubati, colour and fancy. Similarly Paderewski’s 1926 Victor of Reflets dans l’eau is exactly the same tempo as, but utterly different from, the less plastic and natural c.1927 roll.  Friedman’s performance of the Gärtner Waltz No.1 – in the Polish Virtuoso disc – shows how the natural flow and flexibility of a disc recording (made in 1925) can become stodgy and rhythmically hobbled when incarnated in roll form. The roll was made a few years earlier. Where things are even more pronounced is in the case of Friedman’s Minute Waltz where the rubati on the roll are mannered and implausible. The roll was set down by early 1924; his disc in 1922. Don’t judge Friedman by his rolls! And especially not the lifeless Polonaise Op.71 No.2 where there’s little if any shape, feeling or contour to the music making. Go to the 1929 disc on Naxos to be revivified.

In one of the most all-embracing of the discs, simply entitled, The Grand Piano Era, we have the same Busoni-Bach Chaconne as on the Busoni disc. We also have some of Lamond’s rolls. His roll of Un Sospiro is much more lateral than his numerous disc recordings of it which were made between 1921 and ’36. Medtner is an intriguing case as he recorded Danza Festiva for roll by May 1926 and later recorded it on disc in 1931. The tempo is identical but it’s what happens within those parameters that distinguished the disc – tremendous flexibility and colouristic complexity.

These disc are have splendid notes and photographic reproductions with full recording details. The standards are maintained throughout, meaning that this series is now one of the very best on the market. Specialists will know to be sceptical of the results but one can hardly complain or cavil at Nimbus’s excellent work.

Jonathan Woolf

Return to Review Index