Pianistimo,
Intrigued to hear that you give recitals on a pianola. Why not get an electric blower and then you can retire to the bar while the concert is on? Or are you worried that you will still need to be there to change the rolls, and so cannot justify the expense? Please let us know.
I'm going to be accused of spamming this thread, but it ain't ma fault, no sirree ...
I think pianistimo may bridle at the idea that she might be giving recitals on a pianola. It is I, pianolist, who do so. Indeed, the term "pianolist" signifies exactly that: a pianola player.
You obviously haven't yet discovered the true nature of these instruments, but there's no shame in that, since for everyone to whom I explain the matter, I always reckon there must be around 1,000,000 born who will never encounter it. Have a look at
www.pianola.org, which I am in the process of writing. It should explain one or two things, and you'll find mp3s both there, and dotted about this site.
If I cama from Mars, and went with you to an orchestral concert, I can imagine that I would ask you what the peculiar fellow at the front of the stage was doing, waving his arms around like that. After all, it would be clear enough to me, as an intelligent Martian, that the real musicians were the ones playing all the different instruments.
If you weren't a musician, you would probably tell me that he was needed to keep the instrumentalists together, but we musicians know that that is a superficial view, and that his real raison d'être is to create a unified interpretation from a group of individual musicians. The important point, from where I stand as a pianola player, is that he is creating an interpretation.
Now, there are two main types of player piano, the better known being the reproducing piano, which plays recorded rolls, marked up in real time by pianists at special recording pianos. I do in fact give concerts with these sometimes, and in 1988, for example, some friends and I organised Percy Grainger to play the Grieg Piano Concerto at the Last Night of the Proms. The main skill in these cases is in restoring and regulating the instruments to play as they should, because the vast majority of the world's reproducing pianos play appallingly, which is why they often have a bad reputation with musicians.
But my main instrument is the pianola, the foot-operated player piano, and by and large the rolls for this were not recorded, but simply transcribed from the sheet music. If you have thought about such instruments at all, you will probably think that they sound mechanical and unmusical, but that is simply because the world's pianola owners do not know how to play them. Scott Joplin and his fellow ragtime pianists probably have a reputation for playing loudly and at an unvarying tempo, because there was a whole series of CDs made where the pianola rolls were bashed out.
On the pianola, one must create the dynamics with the feet. That is not to imply some sort of smooth, terrace-like dynamics, but as varied a mixture of accents, sub-accents and general accompanimental levels as one can manage. There is a tempo control, operated by the right hand. This is not for setting an inexorable paper speed, but has to be constantly, and sometimes quite violently, controlled, in order to bring about anything from the most minute to the grandest and most sudden inflections of rubato. There are other hand levers for the pedals of the piano, and also levers which subdue the relative dynamic levels of the treble and bass sections of the instrument.
I put an mp3 of the Minute Waltz somewhere in the Performance thread recently. I don't like playing these rolls "without expression", because it turns the whole concept of the pianola into a circus trick, but you can take it from me that the roll which I am playing is utterly metronomic, in that there are no inherent inflections of tempo in it at all. Now, you may or may not like my interpretation, which is slower and less insistent than many modern ones, but it certainly isn't metronomic!
I trust this explains something of the matter! On and off I am trying to run an "Editing of Piano Rolls" thread, as an aid to educating musicians, with the explanatory text in the Performance section, and the musical examples in the Audition Room. Apart from these considerations of interpretation, there were at least a hundred composers in the 20th century who wrote music specially for the instrument, since it is not restricted to the compass or number of the human hands. Stravinsky in particular was interested, and you'll find a page devoted to him at
www.pianola.org.
There, I hope that answers your question, and I hope it will not have diverted this thread for too long!
PS: Johan - do feel free to cut this out and put it in the Editing of Piano Rolls thread, if you feel it should go there.
Topic: Your deapest and darkest fear!!!!!(Muahahahahahaha)