Disregard everything you’ve heard in recent years – pro or contra – about reproducing pianos: this is something quite different – not ready-made performances by an identified artist, but rolls for pianola (i.e. a foot-pedalled player-piano) directly transcribed from the scores and interpreted by a virtuoso. And interpretation is the right word, for every nuance of pace and dynamics, every contrast of internal levels, every emphasis or agogic accent, every staccato articulation has to be supplied by the hands and feet of the player, who obviously needs to be a first-class musician with a detailed understanding of all his scores.
Rex Lawson is an artist of this kind, who has demonstrated his skills in various parts of the world and who, in addition, has himself cut most of the rolls used for the present CD. That is an art in itself, as is shown by his cunning addition of upper-harmonics mixtures that produce a different timbre, which he uses to highlight passages in, for example, the Arrival of the Queen of Sheba. It is noticeable that the blandest sound on this disc appears, perversely enough, in Les noces, the one roll not cut by Lawson. But this is historically of great interest, since this was one of Stravinsky’s original options for the scoring of that seminal work (documented by the manuscript held in New York), though there were some errors of transcription that will engage the bloodhound instincts of Stravinsky experts. The greatest fun on this disc is provided by sparklingly buoyant performances of movements from Pineapple Poll, which also contains some delicate pianissimos, of which the recording of the ingenious and crystal-clear version of the Lutoslawski variations might have captured more. But the prize here must go to the Rachmaninov Paganini Variations, which is an absolute knockout – a performance you really must hear!'