Glad you like it! I have been involved in player pianos for about 35 years, and I have a best friend who has been with them even longer. I regard him as the world expert on reproducing pianos, which are the automatic ones. He has three Steinway O grands, one Welte-Mignon and two Duo-Art. We are both exceptionally lucky that we live so close, about twenty minutes from each other. If I wanted to find other people with as much musical knowledge about reproducing pianos, I should have to go to Austin, Texas, or Sydney, Australia. In fact, I have been to Austin a number of times, for exactly that reason.
Denis, my best friend, and I got together a group of enthusiasts and founded the Pianola Institute in the mid-1980s. There are many other societies for player pianos around the world, but we wanted one that would concentrate on the music.
Unfortunately, there is no God-given rule that says that reproducing pianos have to be good before they are allowed on to CD. All it takes is someone who owns one, in whatever condition, and a record producer with cloth ears and an ambition to make money. As a result, there have been many series of such CDs, nearly all of poor quality.
If a 78 record is played back on poor equipment, it will distort the sound of the recording. Maybe the pitch will be wrong, or unsteady, or the acoustic will be poor, but in general terms there will be something that tells you that it IS wrong. But if a reproducing piano plays poorly, then it will be the interpretation of the music which suffers, while the acoustic may still be excellent. This will understandably be very confusing for those with a good perception of what piano playing should be like, but with little knowledge of how such instruments work in practice.
Rather than start a general discussion about reproducing pianos under the banner of Medtner, I think I shall begin a new thread. I've read several posts to this forum which mention player pianos, and there are clearly a number of mistaken impressions about! I did a Nancarrow concert in London last night, and I'm dead beat for all sorts of reasons, not least that pianolas are heavy to move; as I approach 60 they are becoming heavier! So I guess I'll start the thread tomorrow, and put it under Repertoire rather than Instruments - I should like it to be a discussion mainly about music and musicians.
Medtner recorded at least 10 rolls for for the Welte-Mignon system, including Canzona Mattinata, which is from Vergessene Weisen, Op 38. He also recorded four rolls for the Aeolian Company's Duo-Art. I'll see what I can find.
Pianistimo - somewhere you mentioned the Kimmel Center. I was there for a concert by the Berlin Philharmonic a couple of years ago. It's certainly a very fine hall. I have several player piano friends in PA, mostly in the Lehigh Valley, but also one who lives across the road from the Kimmel Center. Actually, Bethlehem is my home from home in the USA - as a Brit, I get a real kick from being able to drive around it without a map!