The New Jersey Star Ledger's March 3 edition featured a Page 1 article
in its "Today" section (Features, entertainment, living, family, etc.)
written by Scott Cantrell of KRT News Service titled "Player Piano
Classics Roll On."
The article started by explaining how old player piano rolls captured
the recordings of master renown pianists. It briefly explained how
old pneumatically operated pianos worked, and that rolls may have been
recorded perfectly, but the pianos on which they are played didn't have
equal longevity.
The body of the article explained how new technology such as recorded
CD's of the old rolls are capturing the performances on fine tuned
pianos. (Strangely, no mention is made of MIDI, nor some of the
digital piano recording systems such as Pianomation). Wayne Stahnke's
Telarc CD is mentioned as the leading example of this effort.
Mention is made of the British Nimbus label which is mining the Duo-Art
catalog to issue CD's. Performances by Paderewski of Liszt and Chopin
are discussed with glowing terms. No specifics of the CD's such as
catalog numbers are given.
This is the second prominent article I've seen in the last few months
in the NY/NJ area with similar subject matter. Interesting to see
Wayne Stahnke's initial efforts receiving such positive and informed
publicity!
Glenn Thomas
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