I've been working on an article for the PPG Bulletin about the
Duo-Art Audiographic series rolls, and looking at the listings
in Charles Davis Smith's catalogue leaves me wondering about the
attribution of some of these rolls to pianist.

Specifically, Audiographic rolls were issued in a number of guises,
and occasionally Smith lists variants of the same title as being by
different pianists.  I suspect he's wrong, and wonder if there are
any collectors who can help confirm this by checking their rolls?

The history of these rolls is that mostly they originated with
the British D-series, and some were later issued in America as the
A-series.  You could theorise that the editors in New York may have
decided to use the Audiographic text and illustrations on what they
considered a superior performance, which could explain an A-series
roll having a different performance to its D-series equivalent.

However, there are cases where two British variants are credited
to different artists, which stretches credibility rather too far --
I am much more inclined to suspect cataloguing error.

For instance, Mendelssohn's Scherzo Op 16 was recorded no less than
three times on Duo-Art, by Durno (5690), Renard (6400) and Kovacs
(072).  There are also three Audiographic variants: two British
issues (D281 and D747) and an American one (A-92).  Smith lists A-92
and D747 as being Kovacs, and D281 as being Renard.  This surely has
to be wrong -- and by simple majority all of these must surely be the
Kovacs performance.

The instances of this that I've spotted are as follows -- there may
well be others:

Chopin: Berceuse Op. 57: A-60 (Novaes), D431 (Hofmann)

Chopin: Prelude Op. 28 No. 15 D-flat "Raindrop": A-55 (Pachmann);
  D831 (Novaes)

Debussy: Préludes Book l No. 10: La cathédrale engloutie: A-34 (Hess),
  D261 / D689 (Murdoch)

Dvorak: Humoresque Op. 101 No. 7: A-65 (Ganz), D3 / D665 (Novello)

Handel: The Harmonious Blacksmith: A-87 (Bauer), D713 (Carreno)

Liszt: Die Lorelei: A-88 (Ganz), D719 (Cernikoff)

Mendelssohn: Scherzo: A-92 / D747 (Kovacs), D281 (Renard)

Nevin: Narcissus: A-79 (Ganz), D933 (Spross)

Rachmaninoff: Prelude in G Op 3 No. 2: A-33 (Hofmann), D25 /
  D699 (Gabrilowitsch)

Rachmaninoff: Prelude Op. 23 No. 5: A-94 / D753 (Prokofieff),
  D65 (Hofmann)

Schumann: Arabesque Op. 18: A-104 (Vecsei), D745 (Volavy)

Schumann: Fantasiestücke Op. 12 No. 3: Warum?: A-41 / D673 (Friedman),
  D13 (Zadora)

I'd appreciate any confirmation of pianists listed on the rolls
themselves, or other information and thoughts about the general issue.
Much of Smith's information came from original catalogues, so there's
no real need to dig out that type of data.  The strongest proof would
be comparison of actual rolls, of course, and maybe enough of these
have been scanned to make the comparison that way.

Julian Dyer