What is the quality of a piano player roll recording?

[lani]

My daughter will be performing Teresa Carreno's Petite Valse (also known as Mi Teresita Waltz), and was looking for quality recordings of the piece.  She came across this cd of Mm. Carreno's and we have no idea what quality to expect as well as how this is achieved.  The piece is recorded by a few current pianists (Carmen Rodriguez Peralta and Alexandra Oehler). but if someone could enlighten us about whether this would be worth the investment for her to listen to a real recording of Carreno playing it would be appreciated.  Thanks.

 Album Details:   Recordings Of Teresa Carreño
Release Date: 11/30/2004 
Label:   Pierian    Catalog #: 22    Spars Code: DDD 
Composer:   Bedrich Smetana,   Franz Liszt,   Frédéric Chopin,   Ludwig van Beethoven,   Teresa Carreño
Performer:   Teresa Carreño

Number of Discs: 1 
Recorded in: Stereo 

This selection features modern digital recordings of a 1923 Feurich Welte
mechanical piano playing rolls made by Teresa Carreño in 1905.

[thalbergmad]

I have a welte Mignon Roll of Horowitz, but you would never guess it was him.

As much could be done to "doctor" a roll 100 years ago as can be done now in the digital age. They are therefore highly suspect.

Not me talking, Harold C Schonberg.

[Motrax]

 For a long time (most likely the case for a roll from 1923), the only things a roll could record were the notes and whether the pedal was "up" or "down." Dynamics were added afterwards by an engineer who either consulted with the pianist, or simply added dynamics by what they remember.

The poor pedalling creates issues with phrasing and tone quality. Furthermore, the lack of reproducible dynamics renders the voicing of the original performer nonexistant. The dynamics that are present are generally bland and unmusical.

Having listened to a number of original rolls myself, I believe piano rolls (and recordings of piano rolls) have about the same trifling musical value as computer-generated MIDI files.

[Nordlys]

I don't agree that the Welte rolls have no musical value.

Welte was very proud of their "reproducing" system. It was a very advanced system, different from ordinary mechanical pianos. They claimed it would faithfully reproduce the playing of the famous pianist. Their slogan was "The masters fingers on your piano".

The rolls were created by recording when the pianist played, and both the time (rubato) and dynamics were registered. However it is not an acoustic recording, and when the roll was created the rubato or timing of the pianist was most easy to accurately reproduce, allthough it can not be 100% trusted. Dynamics was more difficult. There existed at least three different systems to reproduce dynamics; The systems of Ampico, Duo-art, and Welte. Welte recorded the dynamics of each note in a "graphic way", and the technicians, who were also skilled musicians and had heard the performance, used this data to program their dynamics system. The Welte system could make continuously crescendos and diminuendos, and also sudden changes, so that accents could be made. What it could not was to differentiate between notes played together in a chord. But this is less of a problem than what one would think, as it is seldom that a pianist plays the notes exactly together (at least at the beginning of the 1900th century, when chords were often rolled).

So the welte recording also comes with dynamics, and although this is created by the technicians, I believe it would usually be a good aproximation of what the pianist played.

It is also true that the recording could be "improved" by correcting mistakes, as this was easy to do (i.e. correcting a C to a D). But the musical representation would be as similar to the original performance as was possible.

I have pierians CD with the piano roll recordings of Claude Debussy. They are very interesting to hear! And indeed musical, not mechanical at all. But one has to bear in mind that it can not be trusted 100% as an exact reproduction.