using his original Welte piano rolls on his 1922 Steinway-Welte upright piano. It has
been transferred to CD.
Welte made and supplied a vorsetzer (robot pianist) as an option for those who wanted to
reproduce Welte rolls on their own piano. No reproducing roll manufacturer, other than
Welte and Hupfeld, provided the option of a vorsetzer for its own rolls. Denis Condon
has a Welte green roll vorsetzer in working order but could not use it on this occasion as
the d’Albert roll in his collection is a red Welte roll. Red rolls are 328 mm and green
rolls are 286 mm in width. He has, in addition, custom-made his own Duo Art and
Ampico vorsetzers so that those rolls can be reproduced on his Yamaha grand piano
which is fitted with the Disklavier-Pro. ‘C’ is the lowest note possible on red Welte
piano rolls, which accounts for the fact that the final ‘B’ is missing from the roll. Why
d’Albert did not play the higher ‘B’ is unknown. If he forgot that ‘C’ was the lowest note
possible on red Welte piano rolls this is evidence that he did not double the ‘B’ at the
octave.
D’Albert’s performance was fast, taking 21 minutes. He did not prolong with sustaining
pedal the dominant seventh harmony just before the final Andante sostenuto and, of
course, we do not know what he would have done with the last note. D’Albert practised
melody-delaying (asynchronisation of the hands) and arpeggiata (arpeggiation or rolling
of chords not so marked) and generally his performance was freer than is customary
nowadays. D’Albert played the ‘Klindworth D natural’, the only recording or
performance the author has heard which contains this textual variant.
ALBERTI BASS
The Alberti bass is a simple broken chord accompaniment which provides a harmonic
and rhythmic basis and a sense of movement. The left hand accompaniment to the right
hand melody in piano music of the classical period often consists of an alberti bass. On
the pianos that Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven knew the alberti bass was easily
controllable but when their works are played on the modern grand piano one must take
particular care to subdue the alberti bass so that the melody can be heard properly.
The Alberti bass of the classical period prattled away, usually within the space of a fifth
or so, but Chopin expanded it with the aid of the pedal as in his G minor Ballade.
Schumann made virtually no use of the Alberti bass.
ALKAN
Charles-Valentin Alkan (1813-1888) was a pianist, organist and composer. He was a
close friend of Chopin, and was also a friend of Liszt’s when Liszt was in Paris in the
1830s. His piano works were almost unknown for many years but in recent years have
been performed and recorded.