Tchaikovsky: Troika Op. 37 No. 11 - November

Описание: Rachmaninoff - piano (1920 recording)


This piece is part of Tchaikovsky’s famous piano cycle The Seasons, Op. 37, a collection of 12 pieces representing each month of the year.

"Troika" (November) evokes the image of a traditional Russian sleigh ride, drawn by three horses across snowy landscapes. The rhythmic patterns in the music suggest the lively trotting of the horses and the jingling of sleigh bells, creating a vivid winter atmosphere.
Tchaikovsky composed The Seasons on commission for the Russian music magazine Nouvellist, which published one piece each month throughout 1876.
"Troika" perfectly captures the joy of a brisk ride through the snow – a true musical postcard from a Russian winter.


Rachmaninoff also performed several works on piano rolls. Several manufacturers, in particular the Aeolian Company, published his compositions on perforated music rolls from about 1900 onwards. His sister-in-law, Sofia Satina, remembered him at the family estate at Ivanovka, pedalling gleefully through a set of rolls of his Second Piano Concerto, apparently acquired from a German source, most probably the Aeolian Company's Berlin subsidiary, the Choralion Company. Aeolian in London created a set of three rolls of this concerto in 1909, which remained in the catalogues of its various successors until the late 1970s. From 1919 he made 35 piano rolls (12 of which were his own compositions), for the American Piano Company (Ampico)'s reproducing piano. According to the Ampico publicity department, he initially disbelieved that a roll of punched paper could provide an accurate record, so he was invited to listen to a proof copy of his first recording. After the performance, he was quoted as saying "Gentlemen—I, Sergei Rachmaninoff, have just heard myself play!" For demonstration purposes, he recorded the solo part of his Second Piano Concerto for Ampico, though only the second movement was used publicly and has survived. He continued to make roll recordings until around 1929, though his last roll, the Chopin Scherzo in B-flat minor, was not published until October 1933.



Link to PDF: http://ks.imslp.net/files/imglnks/usi...

Scanned early '900 Ampico Piano roll n. 57914, digitally restored by me with midi software and modern piano samples!

The Youtube piano rolls project
When i discovered that old piano rolls could be easily scanned with modern hardwares and then converted into an exact MIDI copy of the roll, i was pretty surprised that nobody has really taken the "duty" to upload, on a stable and frequented site like Youtube, all the material available on the internet. So today im planning to upload all the 1k files i have my hands on, trying to always respect the copyrights and trying when possible to search and synchronize the music sheets with the audio which is sampled from MIDI using some free softwares around online! What I've unexpectedly found is an almost infinite list of GREAT pieces, totally and inexplicably forgotten! Some of the pieces are completely never uploaded on any source on the net and some others are very rare to find; togheter whit these rare pearls we have also a lot of fantastic and very interesting performances of great and better known classical pieces recorded more or less one hundred years ago, where I've found that interpreting a piece was significantly different, hear to believe! This entire project is of course taking a lot of my free time (time to select, to fix with midi editor, to find the best sound with samplers and options, to look up the sheets and syncro etc) but that s still a thing i really wanna do, for pleasure, curiosity ,culture and for the others! So if you wanna help a little i may only ask to like, share and subscribe:) nothing more! Thanks if you read up here and have a good time! Bruno

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