RE: [F_minor] The re-recording....

["Robert Merkin" <bobmerk@earthlink.net>]

It's been done before (and mentioned on F_minor). 

Around 1905, a German engineer, Weldt, designed a roll-cutting piano and playback machine intended to perfectly capture and reproduce a pianist's nuance of finger and foot. It worked sublimely, but was far too expensive, and mechanically fragile, to compete with the "ordinary" player piano, which can't reproduce the player's finger or foot pressures. (That dates from about 1840.)

When the player hit a key, the key plunged a carbon rod down into a trough of liquid mercury, and the depth of the plunge determined the voltage output signal -- tiny, but reliably amplifiable. This signal controlled the roll cutter. The pedals also plunged carbon rods into mercury troughs.

Though the party ended when World War One broke out, for about 15 years Weldt kept his fragile piano-roll-cutter in a castle on the Rhine, and invited Europe's finest pianists and piano-playing composers to hang out rent-free and cut a roll whenever the spirit moved them. Quite a large and remarkable treasury of their perfectly-captured performances managed to survive two world wars.

Playback was on a robot called a Vorsetzer (I guess "thing that sits in front"). It was a set of 88 robot fingers and 3 robot feet which could play the keyboard of any piano it was rolled up to. A set of modern hi-fidelity LP recordings around 1960 used a Steinway in an audio studio in Los Angeles. They were issued as "Legendary Recordings of the Great Piano Masters" (or some such hifalutin title) by the Book-of-the-Month-Club. 

The book that came with them contains a quote from the young (but already famous) Glenn Gould, who marvelled at the difference between these interpretations, and the interpretations taught as historically authentic in modern conservatories. Some Weldt interpretations of 18th century classics contain traditional echoes of interpretations that date to Mozart's time -- in other words, there are hints in the Weldt performances of the actual way pianists of Mozart's day interpreted the works.

While Weldt transcribed these performances, ordinary phonograph recording was in its horribly squawky infancy. But these performances managed -- by several miracles of history, research and loving preservation -- to leapfrog a half-century of time. If anyone's come across these recordings re-issued on CD, I'd love to buy them.

Bob

> [Original Message]
> From: musical mat <wicks_m@hotmail.com>
> To: <f_minor@email.rutgers.edu>
> Date: 9/20/2006 7:42:48 PM
> Subject: [F_minor] The re-recording....
>
> Hey all,
>  
>      Being a pianist and all, I'm just curious how in the world they can reproduce the same kind of piano key touch.  I mean, the timing, and notes, I can understand, but how the touch?  Any one???
>  
> >From a pianist.  
> Wicks
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