When I found out that Tiffany was in The Netherlands, I simply had to invite her to the Pianola Museum. Just like you, fellow subscribers, I enjoyed her vlogs about the vault of the American Steinway headquarters, the Wagner piano in Luzern, the Collezione Tagliavini in Bologna and the many detailed vlogs about tuning and technique. But most importantly the recent vlog about the 2015 Steinway Spirio invention. Exactly 100 years earlier Steinway promoted a most comparable system, their reproduction grand piano's with mechanics of Welte and AEolian. We have several of them in our collection. Well, it was a great pleasure to have Tiffany as a guest and we had some great discussions about the professional music world and the importance of her vlogs, bridging the distance between performer and listener. Happy to see the result of her visit on RU-vid, which is as personal and vivid as always. Thank you Tiffany for being such a great ambassador of (classical) music. Added note for Dutch viewers: After the museum tour I discussed with Tiffany the possibility of a concert in one of the major Amsterdam concert venues, with a meet and greet in the Pianola Museum, so all Dutch fans of Tiffany can enjoy her great talent and special personality real time. There is a good chance things will work out, possibly even later this year. To Dutch followers of Tiffany who want to help realising this opportunity: just send a mail to the Pianola Museum and I will get in touch with you.
@@christinenorbe8618 The simple answer: not. A large part of the mechanism is removed before tuning. That is the main reason that so many player piano's lost their machinery. They were built into quality piano's so many still survive in their mutilated form, 90 or 100 years later.
Hi Anna, nice reaction! Mannheim is not too far from Amsterdam. So whenever you are in Holland, I will be most happy to show you around. Many pianists of name and fame found their way to what is possibly the smallest museum of the world, but with more than 30.000 music rolls a real connoisseur might spend more time in the museum than in its much larger siblings :-)
This reminded me of what the Steinway CEO said about the future of Steinways having built in WiFi and being able to stream live concers at your home. Imagine a digital version of this mechanism, concerts of the greatest pianists being broadcast all over the world - exciting to think about!
@@resmarted Yes, a smartphone/tablet/pc does partially what I described, too. But do you really think the "little box that fits in your pocket" will come close to the experience of hearing a piece played by an instrument?
@@voom6996 Yes. Lossless audio files and a high quality speaker. It doesn't have to be with a phone, just making the point that you can already enjoy that with near identical quality. Besides, if you were to pay money for a steinway piano to do that, you might as well just buy a plane ticket and go to the concert. It's a cool idea, but really not practical.
@@resmarted That's true and it is indeed impractical. If this comes out, it won't be for the general consumer anyway. The novelty aspect alone is enough for me to consider the idea and doesn't make it any less exciting to think about.
Many of the large mansions in New York and all over the US had comparable roll operated pipe organs, with trumpet- and string registers, harp sounds and percussion in the halls and grand staircases. If you realise that only around 1925 microphone recorded electrically amplified music became possible, you will get an idea about how sensational it was at parties... And the ghost aspect: Once a month I give a presentation/concert for children aged 3 to 12, and every month a ghost is playing the keys of one of the Steinways. Magic!
Tiffany you couldn't be doing a better job with your content! And it is wonderful to see your career developing, with nearly everything still ahead of you.
Quite fascinating - thank you. This vlog demonstrates the wide diversity and experience of your followers. And as I've I said before - Music has the capacity to 'Open Doors'.
Absolutely fascinating. Thank you Tiffany and thank you Fokke Baarda & Kasper Janse for making this possible. I will certainly visit the next time I'm in Amsterdam!
What then would people not unlike when even such an interesting video still has people who don't like it? This simply shows we should never be bothered when people say they don't like us. Thanks for sharing this, Tiffany
it is so amazing that people already have this idea since early days and how much it has evolved.. always enjoying your behind the scene videos, tiffany! keep it up♡
Wow! I really, really loved that video tour :) You can tell that the person who was talking in the video is very passionate about it all, I love it! Thanks for including that Chopin Scherzo bit at the end, that was absolutely beautiful. Thank you! A must visit for me
Tiffany, what a lovely tour! My father would have been familiar with some of that gear. He played piano in a jazz band in rural western Canada beginning almost 100 years ago. In 1930, at the age of 16 he won five dollars in a talent contest playing Beer Barrell Polka on a trumpet. You're a 'piano roll' model.
Allow me a small correction. Kasper Janse is one of the early collectors, founding father of the museum and he is living for (and with) pianola's. You can see him in action around 7:45. I met Kasper when he was trying to create a public museum around his collection, which he started in the seventees. The museum opened in 1992 and I was board member for many years. He is living for his passion, I am now "just" one of the volunteers and I give a monthly concert for children.
I'd never heard of this instrument before this video. This seems so amazing that they had these so long ago already. I really wish they were more common, these are so awesome. Great video Tiffany! thank you!
Ahhh it was so much fun to watch how the instruments developed back in the days, I've only heard the presence of piano rolls but it was my first time to see the real ones! Thank you a lot Tiffany!
Well that was way more interesting than I expected. Some of those are really nice. And before the invention of radio/stereo, I'm sure it was great to have in your home for entertainment.
Wow, it’s so awesome to see that those are the original rolls of all those composers. This gentleman is so kind and very organised. It would probably require a lot of work to maintain it all like that
Absolutely. One of my favorites is actually: Saint-Saens playing Chopin, beautiful! Very special: Mahler playing parts of his 4th symphony on piano, but quite different from the meticulous tempo-indications in his score. And Gershwin of course, he earned some money as a pianola recording artist. I loved to play a Beethoven roll by a 90-year old pianist who as a child actually heard Beethoven play! Haven't seen that roll for quite some time.
Thank you, Tiffany, for making this video for your viewers! And many thanks to the gentleman at the Pianola Museum for enriching/educating our lives. What a delightful place to visit, even vicariously through YT! The premises and instruments are so period authentic that one might expect to find a piano roll, somewhere on one of those high shelves, with the theme music “Somewhere in Time” by John Barry 😉. Thanks again, everyone, it was so enjoyable!
The museum is small. Two rooms and a hallway packed with instruments and artefacts. But it is a gem, a true time machine. Most instruments are playable, and together with the entourage you are instantly transported to the fin-de-siècle and the roaring twenties. That is the big difference with other far more sophisticated museums. Twice a week a concert of life musicians for an audience of ca. 40, all on touching distance of the artists. So if you are near Amsterdam, check opening times but also the concert agenda.
One player came from Yonkers to Amsterdam! Made in 1908! So interesting to see the mechanisms. Nice, enthusiastic RU-vid friend giving the tour. Thx for letting us in on your acquired opportunities! couldn’t have the experience without you. And you make it more fun and interesting!
Thank you Tiffany,when In Amsterdam I did not avail myself of the opportunity to visit the Museum,you have brought it to my home.,I just wish you could have played for us.
I like all of Tiffany's vlogs; no question. But my favorites are the ones like this. For one, I'm a Technician who has worked on some historical instruments, and in the mid-1990s I rebuilt an Aeolian Duo-Art mechanism- quite a challenge that was, but also a lot of fun! For the other, this is the kind of vlog I forward to my colleagues and friends and post the link as 'public' on my FB page, in the hope that at least a couple of them watch it, and maybe subscribe to Tiff's channel.
My father has a Cincinnati Full upright player piano that he is getting redone including the mechanical components. So excited to see it back to how it was in the late 1800's and learn to play.
Well, it makes perfect sense that all those machines for which you gotta use pedals are collected and stored in a museum located in Amsterdam. What if their love for biking came from all this pedaling on pianolas? >D It is a very sweet museum btw, I'm happy they managed to keep their place, because like 2 years back they were seriously thretened by eviction.
Wow! That's really interesting! A couple of them appeared to involve some serious aerobic exercise. I wasn't aware of the complexity of those old auto-pianos. Love this vlog! Thanks Tiffany!
You can always hear if a piano 'operator' does a mechanical job or adds musicality, a feeling of the frasing and tempo etc. The best pianola player I know is a retired brass player. I am actually a viola player. Many rolls give extra information (printed) about the expressions! The "aerobic: roll was one of the "unpalyable" ones, Balllet méchanique by Georges Antheil. 30 to 40 fingers together, or a lot of air flow.
That reminds me of the carnival machines that have a similar system but they have lots of instruments including Organs, drums and flutes. This stuff is just so fascinating.
@@danielwhite9595 In fact in the Netherlands, in Utrecht, there's one of the greatest mechanical music instrument museum. Here's a video of Martin Molin (Wintergatan) visiting it: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-xs0mP2cOmJs.html (there's a complete series of videos of this museum). It's so interesting! :)
Wow it’s great to know that you can listen to composers like Debussy playing his own compositions, I didn’t know they recorded piano rolls! Great video Tiffany! Edit: spelling mistake
If you have time and want to see a whole lot more of early musical instruments, hop over to Utrecht and go to the Museum Speelklok. It's housed in an old church and a lot of early street organs, ballroom organs, and various other instruments from the turn of the 19th century. They also have a Steinway player piano. Tours are offered in English as well as Dutch, French, and German. Just tell them what language you speak and they will accommodate you.
Check out the new Yamaha Disklaviers, which allow you to play discs of other artists’ or of yourself through the acoustic piano. Also, if you are ever in St. Augustine, FL, visit the Museum of Musical Instruments. You can play on Maria Callas’s Knabe and see 1900’s instruments such as player pianos and Orchestrions.
In the early years, the first decade of the 20th century, this model was current. It plays with its robot fingers on any (piano)keyboard. And in every house of some standing a piano would be available. These are the instruments that go by names as 'Pianola', 'Phonola' or 'Pleyella'. Only later it became more common to build upright piano's and grands with an added player mechanism. They are known as player piano's and reproduction piano's, depending on further automation.
This was such a unique topic for your vlog! Absolutely fascinating! I’ve barely heard of pianolas and have seen piano rolls in western movies set in the old salons but this was a great up close and personal educational tour. My favorite parts were listening to the piano roll made by Debussy and Liszt’s Liebestraum by his student. These instruments remind me of the player pianos, especially fresh in my mind, the new Spirio. The other point that is interesting is can we really call an instrument that sounds like a piano, a piano if it doesn’t have keys? This was an awesome vlog! Thanks!
The Liszt student was Eugen d'Albert. There are recordings by Ravel, Debussy and Saent-Saens, by Mahler and Hindemith. Grieg supervised several rolls shortly before his death; he was totally impressed when he heard fellow pianists and could recognise their playing. Many jazz pianists including Scott Joplin, Gershwin and Art Tatum recorded. A young Horowitz, Wanda Landowska and possibly the greatest pianist of his time, Paderewski.
O, and let me add something. Piano rolls in westerns are not accurate. Pneumatic roll-operated piano's were sold from 1900 onwards, and westens are typically set between 1820 and 1880. The instruments in movies and Lucky Luke cartoons are barrel-piano's, operated by a large wooden drum. The larger version of a music box, or the smaller sibling of a carillion in a tower. We have a few barrel piano's in the museum, and the opening scene of Tiffany's vlog shows a little version, with percussion and a tiny triangle. But the very famous Laurel and Hardy movie The Box is actually partly a pianola joke. It starts in a player piano shop ("this is the newest model") and in the end they are able to escape the furious house owner when Stan Laurel activates the pianola, playing the national anthem.
Love your videos. Good use of natural light near the window. Loved that in your 50 questions video you said you had watched every Casey Niestat vlog video. Subscribed. Liked. Commented. Doing my part.
No, a 1910-1930 'Spirio'. In the twenties Steinway & Sons delivered grand piano's and uprights with reproduction mechanics of the three leading companies: Welte Mignon, AEolinan and Ampico. The reproduction system was pneumatic (air flow, operating valves for the action).
Fokke Baarda Thanks for the correction, I realized after I posted that I got the date muddled up. It was a very interesting tour of your museum on Tiffany’s vlog.
For the readers: Kops(je) is the pianist/accordeonist of maybe the greatest Dutch popgroup, De Dijk. We had many discussions about classical music. Well, I am in contact with Tiffany about a possible concert in one of the great Amsterdam concert venues, with a meet and greet in the Pianola Museum, so Pim Kops and all other Dutch fans of Tiffany can enjoy her great talent and special personality real time.
@@kopiwav GREAT. I think it is good to discuss possibilities for a concert a.s.a.p., so things get started. Please contact me directly (mail/phone/whatsapp) or through the Pianola Museum. They have my direct number.
Can anyone please tell me what the name of the song is at 3:30??! 😊 My grandmother used to play this piece all the time when I was a little kid and I would get so excited when she would play it! Now I am grown up and I am a pianist myself and would really like to know what the song is so I can play it!! 😊
The ancestor of MIDI haha. Super vlog Tiffany ^^ I'm happy if my views of your vids help a bit with opportunies for you, but you repay us 100x with such awesome vids. Thanks
Tiffany, love the vlog and thanks to the Museum people. I learned on a old pianola, always wanting to play like my favourite rolls. As I progressed we upgraded the instrument and said goodbye to the pianola. I have seen many different makes and they are great instruments. The pedal technique is quite a workout and needs practise. My mother could always make the pianola play best but we kids were only little with little legs at age 3 and 4 onwards. Now I want another pianola along with my Grand. All my friends could have fun. Did they show you a pianola with transposing lever? A collection of “good” pianos and pianola’s is my dream.
The Aeolian company (Pianola) and the Story and Clark company (QRS) were the early player piano technology in the 1900's. Today only QRS still produce modern player piano technology from the 1900's. 🎹🎼🎶🎵
Very nice video! It'd be amazing to listen through the piano rolls and compare how certain pieces were interpreted in the past. Didn't expect to hear Hubert Parry's Jerusalem but there it was at 6:02!
Tiffany!!! This was extremely interesting! THANKS!!! Now when I listen to the 2 volumes of "A window in Time" on CD with Rachmaninoff by Telarc I know THAT YOU CAN actually recover the real Sergei from these rolls. Still few left on Amazon. BUY!!!
Hi Tiffany. I practice the piano for up to 4 hours a day and I have been having trouble with my back. Do you have any advice on how to stay injury free when practicing? Keep striving
Honestly, you can look at your position, but try to ask a kine some exercice you can do to fortify the muscle in your back! and do break. Relaxation is important, but it's and easy word for something that can be hard to get
Sure. Actually, part of the Spirio recordings of older pianists are reproductions of pianola rolls. And some of the rare rolls in the Pianola Museum are actually modern paper copies of historic rolls. There are CD-recordings of rolls played under optimum circumstances, like the Grand Piano Series of Nimbus records. The Pianola Museum released three CD's, one dedicated to original tango rolls from Argentine. Etc. And there have been numerous attempts, some quite good, of digitising rolls for midi systems. One of the major roll companies, QRS from Buffalo, even produced a modern midi system based on their roll catalogue.
I have a grand pianola with between 100-300 roll. (Steck, never heard of this brand before that piano) But it doesn't work anymore since we tuned it and make some repair :'( (the guy tried to do his best, but it's not totally made like recent piano)
Dear sir, can I use all the "rols" or is there not a standard ?? and where can I find some books over the pianola. I tried already "2de hands" and e-Bay, but nothing to find !!Can you help me?? Yours, Patrick
