Those with the original cassettes or CDs won't be interested, but BBC
Radio 3 (classical channel) will be broadcasting two of the Etudes
Tableaux recorded by Rachmaninov on Ampico rolls, as played on Norman
Evans's converted Estonia grand in the Kingsway Hall, London, in 1979
and recorded by Decca.

This will be at some time between 4 and 5.30 PM BST (between 11 AM and
12.30 PM EST) on Sunday 9th May in the listeners' requests program
"Three for All".  I understand BBC R3 is available on satellite.

I am the listener in question and the presenter, Brian Kaye, went to
the extent of phoning me for an opinion on the fidelity of the disc
recording to the original performance.

I hedged somewhat -- pointing out that a recreation on a concert grand
in a large hall, as here, is necessarily going to sound different to
an original performance in a studio using a six-foot grand -- but
Rachmaninov was always particular about recording conditions and
certainly authenticated the rolls as played back on a piano similar
to that recorded on.

This was my third choice of record, the others being:

1. Any recording taken by the BBC in 1941 when Sergei Rachmaninov
visited England.  (Answer: there were none, as Rachmaninov liked to
control recording conditions.)

2. His 2nd Piano Sonata, as played in a BBC broadcast in 1979 by the
young South African pianist Marc Raubenheimer, who was killed in the
Tenerife air crash in 1982.  (Kaye broadcast this at the end of April
-- wonderful!)

Dan Wilson, London