NEW YORK--In the heyday of the player piano, a leading maker of piano rolls tried to recruit pianist Arthur Schnabel to commit his formidable skills to the format. Schnabel, who previously had resisted offers from others, was told that the company had developed the capability of reproducing 16 musical nuances on its rolls. "I am sorry, but I am capable of 17," Schnabel is said to have replied. Schnabel eventually succumbed, as did a remarkable list of other now-legendary performers and composers--including George Gershwin, whose performances on the hit Elektra Nonesuch release "Gershwin Plays Gershwin: The Piano Rolls," have spurred new interest in the medium. From the turn of the century until the early '30s, piano roll releases fed a broad market of consumers who wanted to hear the pop rhythms of the day and the works of respected classical performers or composers. In that period, the player piano survived as an institution of home entertainment. "Anybody who was anybody made piano rolls," says Bob Berkman, CEO of 94-year-old, Buffalo, N.Y.-based QRS Music Rolls Inc., which is considered the only mass maker of new piano roll music and now owns the only existing manufacturer of piano roll players, Story & Clark. During the player piano's glory days--when some 2.5 million players were sold--fans could chose from performances by Gustav Mahler, Edvard Grieg, Igor Stravinsky, Sergei Rachmaninov, Claude Debussy, Sergel Prokofiev, Percy Grainger, Leopold Godowsky, Scott Joplin, Jelly Roll Morton, Moritz Rosenthal, Josef Lhevinne, Josef Hoffman, Paderewski, Victor Herbert, Fats Waller, Eddy Duchin, Artur Rubinstein, and Vladimir Horowitz. The rolls sold for about $1.25 each. Great names from Broadway and Tin Pan Alley--including Richard Rodgers, Cole Porter, Vincent Youmans, Walter Donaldson, and Eubie Blake also added their musical imprints to the roster of piano rolls, according to collector Randolph Herr. The player piano was such a strong part of the home entertainment market that piano roll makers were even compelled to add a "world music" touch to their catalogs so they could appeal to the recently arrived immigrant populations, especially those from Eastern Europe. A fair number of rolls were marketed featuring Hungarian, Polish, and Yiddish melodies. Starting in the century's teen years, Gershwin made many rolls as both a composer and, importantly, as a performer, playing the works of other composers. But it is Gershwin's own compositions, in a meeting of cultural sensibility and digital computer technology, that have transformed an album of piano roll performances into a remarkable success for the Elektra/Nonesuch label. "Gershwin lays

Gershwin: The Piano Rolls" reached No. 1 on Billboard's Classical chart and made its mark on The Billboard 200 album chart. To make the release, Gershwin's original piano rolls were played using a rare 1911 device called a Pianola. This machine, which has expression levers and felt-tipped "fingers," can be positioned in front of any piano to allow playback of piano rolls. For this recording, it was linked with a Yamaha Disklavier, an acoustic piano fitted with a computer and optic sensors. The Disklavier can record and play back a live performance on 3.5 inch floppy disc. A floppy disc recorded from the playback of the original piano rolls was then played back through the Disklavier in a recording studio to create the CD (Billboard, Nov. 11, 1992). Artis Wodehouse, who produced the set, drew from 130 Gershwin rolls and selected 65, she says, based on the "quality of the music. It was always a musical decision. If the tune wasn't strong or it was hackneyed, it meant goodbye to that one." Wodehouse has begun working on a Gershwin sequel due in the fall. Unlike the all-Gershwin first volume, the new disc will contain Gershwin's piano roll performances of works by Irving Berlin, Jerome Kern, Con Conrad & J.R. Robinson, Maceo Pinkard, and John Schonberger. Elektra/Nonesuch also has commissioned Wodehouse to develop piano roll releases on other artists. Because of Gershwin's continuing popularity since his death in 1937, he has been linked with previous disc releases of piano roll performances in recent years, including those on the Biograph, Pro Arte, and Klavier labels. However, one of the most fascinating releases was a mid-'80s disc on Sony Classics featuring conductor Michael Tilson-Thomas and the Columbia Jazz Orchestra, on which a Gershwin piano roll performance of his 1924 masterpiece "Rhapsody In Blue" was played against the live orchestra. Gershwin hasn't been the only artist to have his piano roll performances benefit from modern technology. Piano roll music made in 1905 by Mahler, released by the Allegro-distributed, U.K.-based IMP Classics label, contains a piano transcription of a section of Mahler's fifth symphony, along with some of his concert hall songs on which new vocal parts have been overdubbed. The album, released last June, peaked at No. 22 on the Billboard classical chart. Success in releasing piano roll recordings relies on imaginative approaches, according to Joe Micallef, president of Allegro. "Simply putting out something without a hook is a worthless exercise," he says. "The 'ghost of Mahler,' if you will, and the Gershwin disc had it. If you have Scott Joplin, you have to use him as a base and do interesting things with it. Otherwise, it would be the same as the stuff that's out on budget or midline releases. In today's classical market, you're always looking for niches." Allegro also is the distributor of the Fone line, which has a series of 10 discs devoted to classical keyboard greats who performed on piano rolls. Perhaps the largest catalog of piano roll music on recordings is marketed by Biograph Records, which started a line in 1971—stimulated partially, says owner Amold Caplin, by the upcoming film "The Sting," which featured Joplin ragtime music.

Caplin's catalog contains 26 piano roll releases, 15 of which are on CD, with others waiting to be transferred. The three Joplin titles are the best-sellers, says Caplin. Other releases feature Gershwin, Porter, James P. Johnson, Waller, Morton, and Cow Cow Davenport. Although the player piano's glories may lie in the past, at least one company, QRS, continues to make piano rolls of current music. "Whatever the public buys, we make," says QRS's Bob Berkman. "Whatever the media is hyping, that's what our customers want. We use the Billboard charts as a reference. We've got 3,000 different titles, and if we sell 1,000 copies of a title we consider it a success." The big sellers among newly minted piano rolls at QRS are performances that appeal to a broad range of ages, Berkman says. Songs from Disney films are popular, including Alan Menken melodies from "Aladdin," "Beauty & The Beast," and "The Little Mermaid." Songs from "The Bodyguard" also are popular, as is "Achy Breaky Heart." Other rolls feature the music of Barry Manilow, Andrew Lloyd Webber, Bank Williams, and Neil Diamond. Prices range from $7.25 to $13.95 per roll. "We made disco tunes in the '70s, but they didn't come out too well," says Berkman. However, pointing to a certain "retro appeal," he says he has done well with titles that have strong melodic lines, such as Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody." Other rolls feature performances by jazz pianist Marian McPartland and the late pop pianist Liberace. In September 1993, QRS purchased player piano makers Story & Clark. Berkman puts QRS' expected annual player piano sales at less than 100, in a price range of $6,000-$7,000. Here, too, modern technology is putting a new spin on the player piano. QRS has developed an onboard device it calls Pianomation that expands the uses of the player piano. It enables one to play a piano roll with added instruments or vocals played simultaneously from a CD. QRS began as a subsidiary of a player piano company named after its founder, Melville Clark, who decided to supply rolls for his instrument. According to Berkman, Clark's decision was historic. In 1908, within eight years of its introduction, the 11 '/,-inch-wide QRS roll became the industry standard. The roll has nine perforations to the inch, and its running time is about three minutes. In 1918, Clark sold his player piano company to Wurlizter. Meanwhile, a more sophisticated version of the player piano emerged, known as the reproducer. Three principle suppliers of reproducers emerged during the early 1900s: Duo Art, Ampico, and Welte. The systems each developed were incompatible with the others (see story, page 71). "It was like the video game business, or the battle of VHS vs. Beta," says collector Herr. And, like record companies, each signed exclusive contracts with performers. More than 60 years later, as the 20th century winds down, there is a nostalgia for things mechanical and a certain wonder in hearing early century giants offering their talents in ways no acoustic recordings of the period could match. In more than a touch of irony, with digital-era technology creating a player piano-like presence in the home, the music industry apparently is on to something.