What is Welte-Mignon
By e9426050@stud2.tuwien.ac.at, forwarded by Terry Smythe
Date: 4 Jun 1996 17:01:00 GMT
From: e9426050@stud2.tuwien.ac.at (e9426050)
Organization: Vienna University of Technology, Austria
Newsgroups: rec.music.makers.piano
A few weeks ago I bought a CD called "Vladimir Horowitz 1926 - Welte Mignon". When I heard the CD for the first time I wondered how clear the sound was. Then I read the booklet which told me that this recording was made with a so called Welte-Mignon device. This was a machine invented at the turn of the century which could register a pianists playing on a "piano roll", which contained the information on perforated paper strips, much like the punch tapes of early computers. After recording the roll was mounted on a playing device, which was placed in front of a normal piano and played the music piece with felt-lined wooden fingers. It is quite hard to believe that there was such a machine and the quality of the playing is quite incredible (I can recommend anyone to buy the CD ) First I thought that this might be some kind of bad joke or a hoax but it seems real. There are some more CDs played by this device and (if it is true what the booklet says) most pieces are played by Mahler, Debussy, Reger and Saint-Seans themselves. It sound quite unbelievable so I just wanted to know what this WelteMignon Device really is, how it functions and how much the playing from the machine differs from the original playing. I live in Vienna and I am playing the piano myself (for 12 years now) and first bought the CD because there was a recording of Chopins Etude 10/8 and 10/5 which I am playing. So I have some of experience with classic. In my opinion there just cannot be a mechanical device playing so fine (the etudes are quite good and there is a recording of the Bach/Busoni Adagio in A minor from the Toccata in c-major, which shows real sensitivity: I just wondered how a machine with wooden Fingers could play really sensitive). I would be very (very!) happy to hear some other opinions about this. The CD was recorded by a label called INTERCORD-Klassik Auslese with the number CD INT 860.864, it was released 1988 by Intercord/Germany. the Horowitz was recorded 1986/87 in Sindelfingen\germany. the Welte mignon rolls seem to have been supplied by various music-museums.
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Terry Smythe (204) 832-3982 (voice/fax)
55 Rowand Avenue smythe@mts.net
Winnipeg, MB, Canada R3J 2N6 smythe@freenet.mb.ca
Home Page: http://www.mts.net/~smythe |
(Message sent Thu 6 Jun 1996, 04:12:47 GMT, from time zone GMT-0500.) |
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