Music and Vinyl: Ignace Jan Paderewski

Ignace Jan Paderewski (1860-1941) was a Polish pianist and composer who had equal, and probably unique, fame as a diplomat and Polish Prime Minister - signing the Treaty of Versailles on behalf of the new Polish nation.

In the early 1900s, recording piano performances by having holes punched in rolls of paper as the keys were struck gained popularity, and competing systems were developed. The Duo-Art reproducing piano made its debut in 1914, and here is a description of the recording process.

Paderewski first recorded for Duo-Art in 1915, and some of his piano rolls have been collected and played for this Everest Records release of 1967 in their "Archive of Piano Music" series. As the album notes indicate (click on the scan below), a 1929 Steinway piano with the Duo-Art mechanism was used to record the sound from the piano rolls. The main piece on this album is Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata. . .