LA Times article Oct. 4, 1978

Roll Out the Player Pianos Terpsichorean Technology

Think back to a time when there were no gramophones, no wireless, no televisions, no tape recorders.

If you wanted music, you had to create it yourself. So everyone had a piano and for those who couldn't play it, there was the great novelty of the early years of this century-the player piano.

It was magic. Small holes punched into a paper roll and suddenly Rachmaninoff, Paderewski, Joplin, Gershwin were in your living room, invisibly playing your piano.

As with all magic, the trick was simple. The piano was played mechanically as air was forced through the perforations in the roll of paper. As the novelty became more popular, the reproducing piano became more and more sophisticated. The three major reproducers-Wilte-Mignon, Ampico (American Piano Company) and Duo-Art (Aeolian Company)-got to the point where a pianist's variations in tempo, volume and phrasing were all faithfully reproduced.

The reproducing piano got so good that two grand pianos were set up on a London stage for pianist Alfred Cortot who alternately performed passages from a Liszt rhapsody with a Duo-Art roll he had cut himself. Critics said if they closed their eyes, the could not tell the difference.

Pianists rushed to make rolls. Many wouldn't let the roll be issued unless they personally approved and edited it. “Overdubbing” became possible simply by taping over unwanted notes or adding new holes for spectacular effects.

You can hear how good the method could be by listening to a unique stereo-quadraphonic recording (Columbia 32402) in which George Gershwin's original 1925 Duo-Art rolls of “Rhapsody in Blue” are restored note by note (rather holde by hole) and paired with a modern orchestral accompaniment conducted by Michael Tilson Thomas.

Klavier records has a number of piano roll albums, several with Gershwin (Klavier 122, 124); Biograph offers original rolls by rag and jazz pianists like Fats Waller (1002, 1005) and Joplin (1006, 1008). Superscope offers the “Keyboard Immortal Series” on tapes and records, a sampling of its chairman Joseph Tushinsky's priceless 18,000 roll collection of the great pianists of the 20th century.

One of the innovations in reproducing piano history was Edwin Welte's Vorsetzer-a huge wooden box with 80 fingers and two pedaling feet that sat in front of the piano to capture every nuance of the artist's original performance through an electrical apparatus attached to the keyboard. Welte's priceless piano rolls were hidden in a cave in the Black Forest during World War II and 8,000 of them are now part of Tushinky's collection.

Now a new invention brings back the spirit of this mechanical reproducing piano and throws it into the age of electronics and computers. Tushinksy's Superscope Co. of Chatsworth, working with Teledyne engineers, has created the Pianocorder Reproducing System-a player piano that uses digitally encoded cassette tapes together with an electromechanical mechanism to bring pianists of the past and present up to your own piano.

It's not cheap. There are three versions of the Pianocorder. An installation kit to convert your own piano (about $2,000 installed); the new Tushinksy-Vorsetzer system that moves up to any piano and plays it ($2,000) and the complete Marantz-Upright piano with the mechanism installed (roughly $3,000) that plays as well as records.

With each purchase, Tushinksy provided 100 prerecorded cassettes, each about 45 minutes-the equivalent of more than 800 piano rolls punched out by the great pianists of the century.

Think of the possibilities. Tushinksy calls it “your own artis-in-residence.” An invisibile Gershwin plays “Rhapsody in Blue” on your piano. Grieg playing Grieg. Stravinsky playing Stravinsky. Rachmaninoff playing Rachmaninoff. Joplin playing Joplin.

But like any bit of magic, there's a dark side. The recording device also allows you to record your or your children's fumbling performances and watch them play back automatically, invisibily, time after time after time.

It's enough to set back music 100 years.

– JOE SALTZMAN

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