After three years of work, I am pleased to announce the release of
12 CDs containing recordings of over 60 Ampico artists playing 166
works from the Ampico classical catalog.  The recordings were made
in March 2007 at Paul Badura-Skoda's recording studio in Vienna, on
a Bösendorfer Imperial piano fitted with Bösendorfer's new mechanical
MIDI player system, called the CEUS system.  Instead of music rolls,
MIDI file realisations were used to play the instrument.

It took three years to produce this series (which I've called the
CEUS project) because of the amount of research required, and also the
number of CDs.  The booklet notes give a biography of every pianist
and as much background to each track as I could find, particularly in
relation to piano rolls and the pianist's recording history.

It was a journey of discovery doing this, and it has strengthened my
belief in the importance of preserving reproducing piano rolls.  I also
believe I am hearing Ampico rolls as never before, certainly with some
of bigger pieces, such as "Rhapsody d'Auvergne", played by Alexander
Brailowsky.

You can listen to samples of every track on the Naxos ClassicsOnline
download service.  Go to http://www.classicsonline.com/eleced/  This is
the "eleced" home page, the name of the label I have used to publish
the CDs.  From this page, you can go to each CD and pick any track to
listen to.  My new web site has a lot more information, sample tracks,
and a DVD is available that has every track from the series.  See
http://www.petersmidi.com/ 

Peter Phillips
Sydney, Australia