I never put a video on YouTube until six weeks ago, and now
I have eighty videos of great piano rolls.  My YouTube channel is
"AeolianHall1".  Sorry if my piano is not in perfect tune, but since
I am tone deaf I never noticed it.  It was because of YouTube that the
following event happened.

You can get email from all over the world if people love (or hate) your
YouTube videos.  Fortunately, I have not gotten any bad ones so far.
My videos are mostly pop music but I love classical also, and I put on
a few of those.  A lot of them are of Duo-Art Audiographic Rolls, the
two best examples of which are Schubert's "The Erl-King" and St. Saens'
"Dance Macabre".

One writer from Australia mentioned he had a web site, and when
I looked at it, I saw that I was dealing with a concert pianist as well
as a lover of Franz Liszt.  This man has written several long treatises
on Liszt's Sonata in B minor, obviously his favorite piece.  Among
Liszt fans, practically all of them will agree that Liszt never
composed a greater piece than this, and it is a landmark in the piano
literature.

Liszt had many pupils, one of whom was Arthur Friedheim, who made many
piano rolls.  Friedheim wrote a book about his time with Liszt and he
tells at least one really good story.  When Friedheim was playing the
Liszt Sonata with the composer in the audience, Liszt said to his
companions words to the effect, "This is how I heard it in my mind
as I was composing it."

Well, as you might imagine, lovers of the Sonata in B minor would love
to hear a performance by Friedheim, but he never made a phonograph
record of it.  Scholars have found a Hupfeld roll catalog that lists
Friedheim as playing the Sonata, but no one has ever found a trace of
it.  After years of failing to find it, some scholars thought that
Hupfeld never issued the rolls.

If they'd asked me, I would have told them that I have the two-roll set
in perfect condition, and it has caused much excitement in the staid
world of classical music.  I have the Hupfeld Phonola rolls, not the
TriPhonola rolls.  The Phonola rolls do not have dynamic coding, but
they do have Themodist snakebites and damper pedal perforations.  Also,
there is a line printed on the rolls that shows how loud Friedheim was
playing at that point.

I made this discovery only about two weeks ago, but I will keep you
posted on developments as they happen.

Regards, Randolph Herr

 [ Visit http://www.youtube.com/user/AeolianHall1#p/u  -- Robbie