1864

Eugen d'Albert was one of Liszt's most important later pupils, along with Sauer and Rosenthal. Sadly many of his recordings are both badly recorded and indifferently played (by the time he recorded he had devoted more time to composition and his technique at the piano had slipped). This recording is of a piano roll he made of the Liszt B minor piano sonata. It is a very rare piano roll, made for the Welte company in around 1905 (early enough for d'Albert to be in fine fettle as performer). It is a very important roll as acoustic records could not accomodate long works on them. The Welte system of rolls allowed the dynamics, attack, pedalling and some degree of touch to be recorded onto them, leaving a fairly accurate (if sometimes tonally opaque) reproduction of the original performance. The transfer of the roll I have managed to acquire is only of the first of the two rolls which make up the complete sonata, and was made in 1970. And more importantly the recording plays the roll at much too fast a speed on the piano. I have used some modern technology to reduce the speed of the playback without altering the pitch, until the speed seemed about right to my ears (we are around 70% of the speed of the recording here). This has meant some compromises in the way the pedalling sounds. Also a sense of onward momentum seems absent in some parts, which again is probably a result of the alteration of the acoustics by slowing it down. However, this is as good as I can get. If anyone <b>...</b>