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Excerpts
Towards a History of the Aeolian Company: Rex Lawson
Foreword
In July 1998 my Pianola and I travelled to Greece to accompany the Siobhan Davies Dance
Company in a performance of '88', a choreographic work created around some of the dazzling
player-piano studies of Conlon Nancarrow. High up amongst the olive groves, in the balmy
twilight that envelops the little hillsides above the Peloponnese coastline, birds
chattered the gossip of the day and the echoes of Orthodox chant drifted upwards from the
cupolas of a sun-ripened basilica. I sat on the steps of a baking greystone amphitheatre
in Kalamata and reflected that this Arcadian setting was the nearest my Pianola had ever
come to the music of the winds. The Aeolians were, after all, one of the early Greek
tribes.
My modish musings were interrupted by a friendly Scottish accent asking me to play some
of the louder Nancarrow excerpts for a sound check, and I blinked my eyes and returned to
the twentieth century. Thus it was that I came to meet Ronnie Thomson, a Highlander with a
personality as sunny as the surrounding Mediterranean coastline, and who, it later turned
out, had recently removed to Manhattan, close by Union Square.
Later in the year, visiting the USA for work, I telephoned Ronnie and arranged to visit
him and his partner one Sunday afternoon in their spacious apartment at 12 East 14th
Street. Note well the address. A pleasant evening ensuing, and the following morning
elapsing with a visit to Merce Cunningham's dance studios, I found myself on the Monday
afternoon with a few hours to kill before the return bus for Pennsylvania was due to
leave.
How better and more productively to spend one's time than to visit New York's grandiose
Public Library and consult the ancient city directories in search of the origins of
Aeolian incorporation? Back in the volume for 1879 I found the Mechanical Orguinette
Company, and before that, the earliest musical instrument manufacturer with a direct
Aeolian succession, the piano firm of Lighte & Ernst, with factories at Nyack, NY, and
showrooms in Manhattan. There stood the entry, in the volume for 1875: Lighte &
Ernst, pianos, 12 East 14th Street.
Were I a believer, I should have reckoned that Harry B. Tremaine, Edwin S. Votey and
perhaps even Orpheus himself were watching me from on high and laughing heartily. As it
was, my rationalist tendencies simply made me glad of the serendipitous hook on which to
hang the start of this essay, and it drove home to me the almost village-like nature of
the musical instrument industry in mid-nineteenth century New York. At 11 East 14th was
the Mechanical Orguinette Company, and at 14 and later 21 East 14th were Tremaine
Brothers. Since 1866 Steinway Hall had been on East 14th, replacing the concert facilities
of the burned out Academy of Music further down the street, and George Steck was also
close by. In short, East 14th Street was the epicentre of New York musical life, a
fitting birthplace for the once largest musical instrument corporation in the world.
Vladimir de Pachmann - an Appreciation: Samuel Langford
Introduction by Denis Hall
The great Russian pianist, Vladimir de Pachmann, was born 150 years ago on 27 July
1848. It is curious that this important anniversary has gone virtually ignored. To what
can this be attributed? That he was eccentric is indisputable, and his approach to music
and the piano is not currently fashionable. Yet he had a long and successful career, and
was admired by Liszt, Godowsky and Friedman. It was probably his non-musical
activities - the obsessional adjusting of the height of the piano stool on stage, his
conversations with the audience while playing, and so on - which divided the musical
public. There seems little doubt that he was well aware of what he was doing, and
thoroughly enjoyed the publicity it brought him; what is important is that none of these
foibles got in the way of his playing; but they were all part and parcel of a unique
personality.
Pachmann, November 1925
Pachmann was in good vein for his recital at the Brand Lane Concerts, and played more
finely than he has done here for some years. It was mainly in his additional pieces that
his greatest skill was shown, and possibly it was his good fortune in coming on so well in
pieces of rapid execution that disposed him to extend his recital so far. It is almost
forty-two years since he first played in Manchester at the Hallé Concerts, on January
3, 1884, when he played Chopin's F minor Concerto, the Barcarolle, and other pieces. Our
own first recollection of him is at his second appearance a year later, when he played
Mozart's D minor Concerto as it has never been played since, with an irresistible
animation which seemed to beam not only from the music but from his whole being. Never,
surely, did a player appear at the concerts who was so openly and graciously delighted
with himself. He ended with a performance of Henselt's study 'Si oiseau j'étais', which
made this piece the most popular of all pianoforte pieces for many a long day, and which
still remains, in our own mind, as a performance that has never been at all nearly
approached. The notes seemed absolutely to be borne up by the air and to have had no
material being whatever. Pachmann has always been unquestionably among the greatest
pianists in the world; yet hardly among the world's greatest interpreters of music. He
himself, in his moments of ecstasy, has always pointed to his fingers as the secret of
his magic; and there is no need for the world to quarrel with the verdict. He has always
been one of the first purists of his instrument, and has been almost first a lover of the
pianoforte, and a lover of music afterwards.
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