Darrell Clarke said (981104 MMDigest):

> Having attended Denis Condon's wonderful "live" performance
> of Greig's Piano Concerto with Percy Grainger (deceased!) and
> the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra in 1978 I can now more fully
> appreciate the difficulty of synchronising a player piano with
> a real orchestra.  At least in that case, the conductor can make
> small corrections as they play together but the skillful part
> comes when the piano has to commence playing after a period of
> orchestra only.  An error of a few milliseconds would be quite
> apparent.
>
> I still find it hard to believe it worked so well.  I think Dan
> Wilson played some part in editing the original rolls.  I wonder
> what corrections were made to allow for tempo change as the paper
> builds up on the spool since, I think, the roll drive was electric
> on Denis's Duo-Art push up player.  Any recollections Dan?

Sorry -- although I was in Australia at the time, I hardly know Denis
Condon and have only met him once.  Most of my time not visiting John
Phillips in Tasmania and looking at the amazing narrow-gauge suburban
trains in Brisbane was spent enjoying the highly congenial Melbourne
player-piano scene.

My understanding of both the Australian and British Percy Grainger/
Grieg exercises is that original or recut DA rolls of Grainger's own
"me playing piano twice over" arrangements were used, being shortened
as appropriate and the orchestra part carefully taped over.

On the British rolls at least, the dynamic codes were not altered.
This would merely have resulted in slightly higher powers in the piano
part which would be compensated for in setting up the piano or
Vorsetzer to match the hall acoustic -- an important part of these
concerts which always involves a lot of running to the back of the
hall in rehearsal and argument at the keyboard.

When the exercise is taken seriously, the conductor normally rehearses
with the orchestra using a cassette taken of the roll playing
elsewhere.  In England I think Rex Lawson uses a historic one from some
time back.  In order to get the first two movements onto one roll, the
orchestral tuttis are cut off the roll altogether and the piano entries
are cued in afresh, either by the conductor using a torpedo bellpush
half a second before, or by a seasoned "keeper" sitting by the piano.

This usually works very well, except that Grainger's treatment of the
Grieg sometimes takes conductors unawares and they have to become
accustomed to it.  At least the pianist doesn't change his ideas
between rehearsal and performance !

Peter Davis's pushup in London, and if I'm not mistaken Denis Condon's
purpose-built one in Sydney as well, can be programmed to change tempo
automatically using the reroll port if a performance uses two rolls
stuck end to end and needs to adjust for the different paper take-up
characteristic which results, but of course a "keeper" can attend to
this if necessary.

When the conductor is pushed for time or the concert program is a heavy
one, things can be entirely different.  With Rex and Denis Hall, I was
involved in a BBC live broadcast of a performance by George Gershwin of
"Rhapsody in Blue" with the BBC Concert Orchestra in the Dome, a fairly
small theatre in Brighton about five years ago.  (Americans: read
Atlantic City -- that kind of place.)

Not only was there no chance for a re-take should things go wrong,
there were some other pieces demanding a complete change of orchestral
layout before the Gershwin, yet we had to construct the pipe run to the
Duo-Art Vorsetzer (Peter Davis's) from the pump under the stage
beforehand.  There was every chance the brass players would stumble
over this and break it up.  So great vigilance had to be employed to
warn them as they came up from below.

Then the piano, a Steinway B, proved to be very quiet and the pump
couldn't be wound up enough to get enough sound out of it, so it had to
be "miked up" and amplified to create a decent balance for the theatre
audience and feedback to the orchestra.  Because of the small stage,
the piano was the wrong way round, so the "keeper" had to sit on the
stool backwards with the piano behind him.

Lastly, and worst, the conductor Nicholas Cleobury was evidently
overwhelmed by having to rehearse so many different pieces and took
the view that no deceased pianist was going to give him any orders.
He would conduct "Rhapsody in Blue" as he saw fit and the composer
could darn well trot along behind.

This resulted in the most extraordinary Duo-Art performance I've ever
seen.  Thank goodness Rex served his apprenticeship in the bassoons of
the Northern Sinfonia !

Sitting sideways so that he could watch both Cleobury and the heavily
marked bar lines on the roll out of the corner of his eye, he kept
Gershwin in time with the TEMPO lever, right the way through.  A QRS
recut had been used in this instance which was slightly narrow, so that
it didn't track perfectly.  Along with the synchronization, Rex kept
slapping the roll gently to keep it centred.

Luckily, this was just before the first interval, so we had all the
gear in Rex's van and were sitting down in a Chinese restaurant before
the concert ended.  Apparently it sounded fine over the air.

Dan Wilson