[CAUT] Grieg Experiment

[Fred Sturm]

Hi Ric,
	Fascinating! Amazing job of matching both style of playing and timber  
of the instrument. It certainly sounds convincingly like a re-creation  
from the past. Do you know to what extent the digitized version of the  
wax cylinder recording was manipulated electronically, if at all? (I  
guess there is bound to be some manipulation, even if not intentional,  
in the mechanical process of cylinder to needle to "trumpet" and then  
placement of mikes and setting gain and whatnot).
Regards,
Fred Sturm
University of New Mexico
fssturm at unm.edu



On Apr 23, 2008, at 11:45 AM, Richard Brekne wrote:

> Hi Folks
>
> I recently was privileged to be the technician for a very special  
> recording on Edward Griegs own old Steinway B.  To make a long story  
> short... old wax roles of Edvard Grieg himself were used to  
> reference his playing style so that a present day pianist could  
> recreate his exact style on Griegs own instrument. There has been  
> some controversy as to how fast to play these old roles.  One thing  
> that came clear was that playing them so as to achieve present day  
> pitch results in the music being very fast and rather makes Grieg  
> the pianist sound a bit comical. The folks behind this project were  
> convinced that Grieg was adamant about using a much lower concert  
> pitch... 434-436 and when playing these roles so as to achieve that  
> pitch the playing becomes much more lyrical and beautiful... more  
> what one might expect from a musical genius such as Edvard Grieg.    
> So we tuned his instrument down from its present day usual 442 to  
> 436... which had a dramatic affect on the sound of the instrument as  
> well... virtually eliminating a very prevalent killer octave area.
> In anycase... the link below is a sample clip which interlaces the  
> new recording with digital copies of the old wax roles of Edvard  
> Grieg himself playing.  I hope you enjoy this little taste of the  
> project. Interesting to be sure.  The segments where the wax roles  
> come in are easily distinquished because of all the static that  
> could not be filtered out. The rest is our recording on Griegs  
> Piano. Hope you like it !
>
> Pianists Sigurd Slåttebrekk / Edvard Grieg
> Producer and Sound Technician Tony Harrison
> Pianotechnician Richard Brekne
>
> http://www.pianostemmer.no/music/Grieg.wav
>
> Cheers
> Richard Brekne
>
>