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MMD > Archives > March 2009 > 2009.03.31 > 02Prev  Next


Early Audio Recordings of Street Pianos
By Nicholas Simons

The recording of the Molinari street piano on Tinfoil.Com is well known
amongst those interested in street pianos.  There is no controversy
about this recording.  It is simply a single Molinari street piano
playing three tunes in succession.  This is easily done.

These pianos have eight to ten tunes pinned on the barrel and the tune
is changed by the simple turning of a small handle on the end of the
case.  Indeed, it is quite easy to play the tunes, one after the other,
with no perceptible break by turning the tune change handle at exactly
the correct moment at the end of each tune whilst not stopping the
turning of the barrel handle.

Erik York's observations about the musicality of this recording,
when compared with later recordings of street pianos, is very telling.
A large proportion of street pianos found today have had their barrels
repinned, many in Great Britain by Cannon Wintle (and there's another
story), and have lost their original and almost always better
arrangements.  Enthusiasts of this type of instrument will almost
always prefer their pianos to have original pinning extant, and such
pianos will realise much higher prices.

Best regards from GB,
Nicholas Simons

 [ An MP3 audio file can be downloaded at
 [ http://www.archive.org/download/edgm9615/edgm9615_64kb.mp3  (1.1 MB)
 [ -- Robbie


(Message sent Tue 31 Mar 2009, 18:40:14 GMT, from time zone GMT+0100.)

Key Words in Subject:  Audio, Early, Pianos, Recordings, Street

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