Re: GG: midi files

[Bradley P Lehman <bpl@umich.edu>]

> >GG midi files would sell like hotcakes. Maybe Sony can do this.
> 
> I guess I don't know what "GG midi files" could possibly be?  Midi
> technology is not 'up' to capturing a GG performance if that's what you
> mean.  I think you would be very disappointed.

Meanwhile, the two new Telarc discs which recreate Rachmaninoff's piano
rolls are selling like hotcakes.  Lots of digital processing there: copy
the piano roll data into a computer, extrapolate all sorts of things, play
it back on the modern equivalent of a player piano.

The result does sound 'better' (what a judgment call!) than earlier issues
of these performances which were simply played back on a real [analog]
player piano...but I'm not getting rid of those earlier issues.  It's like
the difference between B/W and colorized films.

-----

Speaking of performances that had no real player, how about the stuff
early in this century that was arranged for pianola?  There was the
freedom to use notes that couldn't possibly be played by any number of
live hands on a keyboard.  I'm thinking particularly of Stravinsky's "Rite
of Spring" roll (was issued on a MusicMasters CD, realized by Rex Lawson):
authorized by the composer, and played real-time by no one.  In the roll
Stravinsky did things that aren't in his duo-piano version or in anyone's
solo version.  (And when M Tilson-Thomas and R Grierson recorded the duo
version, intended for one piano, they used two pianos because they kept
crashing into each other.)  The pianola version of "Petrushka" similarly
goes beyond the famous solo arrangement.  This freedom from actual
performance was common pianola practice, according to the CD's booklet.

Lawson: http://www.otherminds.org/Lawson.html

Stravinsky as _Time_'s classical musician of the century:
http://www.pathfinder.com/time/time100/artists/profile/stravinsky.html

And in the latter half of the century there is Conlon Nancarrow's work on
piano rolls.  Astonishing.

Bradley Lehman | http://www-personal.umich.edu/~bpl/ | Dayton, VA, USA