Jürgen Hocker, the German chemist and player piano expert who is in the process of transferring the output of Conlon Nancarrow for MD&G, has contributed an additional side project in the form of Player Piano 2: Chopin. This consists of nine pianists "around 1900" (actually around 1920; the hand-played roll didn't appear until 1904) performing various Chopin pieces through the medium of the Ampico. Chopin was a heavily featured composer in the era of early records and roll recordings as these media suffered from time ...
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Jürgen Hocker, the German chemist and player piano expert who is in the process of transferring the output of Conlon Nancarrow for MD&G, has contributed an additional side project in the form of Player Piano 2: Chopin. This consists of nine pianists "around 1900" (actually around 1920; the hand-played roll didn't appear until 1904) performing various Chopin pieces through the medium of the Ampico. Chopin was a heavily featured composer in the era of early records and roll recordings as these media suffered from time restrictions, and his works were short enough to fit. These roll recordings are all from the Ampico catalog or are Ampico dubs of Triphonola rolls. They are played on a Bösendorfer Grand using a roll-up type player and are recorded LOUD -- one would even say "juiced up," at least compared to what such machines sound like in person -- with little or no reverberation added.The disc contains some interesting pianists -- namely Mieczyslaw Münz, who recorded the Ampico roll represented here in...
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