An American in Paris - Gershwin CD

Being restricted somewhat from movement away from the house to a certain degree has permitted an extensive use of music playing in the background while accomplishing other chores.  We are blessed to have Pandora Radio going most of the time, with my favorite location, the Gershwin Station, a collection of similar music.

As I was going over recent Facebook entries I found my mind wandering as they had the American in Paris on, as found on the CD, Gershwin Plays Gershwin – The Piano Rolls .  The piano rolls were played on a “Yamaha Diskclavier, a computer-driven descendant of the player piano”.  The quality of these  performances is breathtaking.  (If you like Gershwin music I recommend this CD for your collection)

Now for a little piece of history on this particular cut; …how it was produced. I’ll copy the information as presented in the booklet provided when I purchased this wonderful recording. 

“The Last selection on this CD is Frank Milne’s 2 roll arrangement of An American in Paris, Cut in 1933, it is one of the most impressive and powerful roll performances of the era.  After the crash of the piano roll industry, the severely curtailed Aeolian Company kept Milne on as its lone roll editor and ceased using performing artists. 

According to Milne’s children, by that time and probably much earlier he was so skilled at arranging that he did not need a recording apparatus to generate the performance.  Much as a composer notates a score, he prepared roll masters by drawing lines on a roll of special graph paper which served as a template for perforating the holes. The roll of An American in Paris is identified, however, as being played by Milne and “Leith”.  We now know that “Leith” was one of Milne’s pseudonyms; to put an arrangement of this complexity forward to the public, it had to be represented as a 4-hand performance.

We have no evidence that Gershwin supervised Milne’s arrangement of An American in Paris but the arranger had previously worked with Gershwin on his late Duo-Art song rolls.  Milne’s version of An American in Paris ingeniously evokes not only the full sonority of an orchestra but also the vitality of a live performance.”