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Well, this is complicated subject.

I do have the quite a lot of the Duo-Art recordings and I would say that more rather like them then reject them. I first got them on Nimbus Records “Polish Virtuoso” with Friedman, Hoffmann, Paderewski and then I developed more interest and more understanding how to live with the Duo-Art limitations

Is it auditable that the there is no human being behind the keyboard and the play is purely mechanical? Unquestionably it is! It is auditable just after a few accords! There are no needs to discuss it; however there are also no needs to misled ourselves thinking that we should be anxious about it. There are plenty of other pianists who play so stupid that compare to them the mechanical Duo-Art’s recordings of Friedman for instance sound like a very “live” music. What I think important is not to fool ourselves thinking how close or far it is from human touch but instead to listen it “as is”.

Yes, certain mechanical stupidity of the reproduction machinery very much bother me but what I do is PUTTING IT RIGHT THE WAY OUT OF PARENTHESES OF MY LISTENING EXPERIENCES and try to figure out what was left… Usually, listing the Duo-Art recordings, with all their inhuman limitation I STILL FIND SOMETHING IN THERE FOR MYSELF….

Well, here is a hypothetical test for everyone. If Josef Hofmann and some of today’s “hero-pianists”, Evgeny Kissin for instance, would record recital on those mechanical piano then we play the recording via that mechanical piano then will we hear that one of them was a truly genus-musician and another was juts an plan-vanilla idiot? I think we would be able to see it and I think it would be an illustration that even in the mechanization of the Duo-Art technology there is a rational grain.

I did not hear personally the “replayed” Alfred Cortot or Glenn Gould but I think that the direction is very interesting even the successes are far from to be indicative. Where we will be with this in 20 year, how about 50 years? Could the machinery “read” or at least mimic the players intentions? After all the intentions are being transmuted via sound. By nature of the fact that we, the listeners and Josef Hofmann for instance were humans we have the same brain-algorithms to undusted, encode and decode the intentions. Sure computers do not do it but we do not communicate with Hofmann’s mind on the language of “infinite unexpressed randomness”, as humans do, but rather we communicate by a structured and very much man-made language – music.  Music in a way is more or less algorithmable and with increase registering of sonic event’s “discreetness”*** I think it might be possible to preserve the sonic footsteps of performing event in it full meaning.

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