Perhaps you have heard those George Gershwin player piano recordings, rendered from rolls of his original performances. Much as I admire Gershwin, his showy, overworked playing hasn’t, to my ears, dated well, even when recreated live by modern human mimics who are a more sensitive to contemporary tastes. It’s like listening to a blousey old soprano drown a classic song in vibrato. There is also something odd about player piano recordings.
In a staggering feat of programming, a bunch of software engineers at a US start-up have managed to restore completely a performance by another distinctive pianist, Glenn Gould, from a low-quality mono recording. Their code listens to the noisy audio and re-synthesizes everything using a modern MIDI-controlled acoustic instrument. And Gould is only one of their dead clients. [via Robot Wisdom]
Glenn Gould was indeed a distinctive pianist (and then some), but unless they’ve sampled his mad crooning accompaniment and somehow synced that up to their MIDI machine, what’s the point?
On the other hand, I’m a big fan of Jürgen Hocker’s player piano arrangements of György Ligeti’s fearsomely difficult piano études – not because they’re necessarily superior to recordings by live pianists (I don’t think they are) but because they’re much more precise in their rendition of their polyrhythmic complexity. So the mechanical version gives me a better idea of what Ligeti was getting at, which in turn means that I appreciate the “live” version all the more.
And Ligeti himself seems to be a very keen on the player piano versions, probably for that reason (not least because one of the études, the first version of number 14, was considered unplayable except by mechanical means, so at least he got to hear it!).
Yes, Gershwin doesn’t come over at all well but I think Scott Joplin does.
Hey – I just saw this site. I don’t know whom you are, but maybe I will know it soon. I worked a lot with Ligeti and Conlon Nancarrow. Were can I find more information about you??
Greetings – Jürgen Hocker