This is an original Duo-Art piano roll of Prokofiev playing his transcription of Rimsky-Korsakov's Scheherazade, performed on a newly restored (www.historicpianos.com) 1926 Chickering grand factory fitted in 1933 with a Duo-Art system in an Ampico B drawer. I recorded this video about a year ago with different microphones than my first video of this same roll, and I believe it better captures the mellow tone of the instrument. In the 1920's, piano transcriptions of orchestral pieces were popular of the reproducing piano, because that was often the only way for many to hear the music, in the days before electronic recording, and with low-fidelity 78 rpm Victrola recordings too short to contain longer pieces like this. Rumors are that Prokofiev was quite inebriated the morning he showed up at Aeolian Hall in NYC to record this piece. Visit www.historicpianos.com to learn more about this instrument.
