Denis Condon Collection of Reproducing Pianos and Rolls
At the library
Archive of Recorded Sound
Locked stacks: Ask at circulation desk
| Call number | Status |
|---|---|
| ARS0163 |
Context
Item belongs to a collection
Archive of Recorded Sound/Music Library - Supplemental Materials
Supplemental materials, including item level inventories, for Archive of Recorded Sound and Music Library collections. These materials support collection finding aids and MARC records without item level description.
- Digital collection
- 30 digital items
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Description
Creators/Contributors
- Contributor
- Condon, Denis (1933-2012), collector.
Contents/Summary
- Summary
- The collection contains rolls of important composers of the period including Busoni, Chaminade, Debussy, Granados, Gershwin, Glazunov, Grainger, Leschetizky, Mahler, Paderewski, Prokofiev, Rachmaninoff, Ravel, Saint-Saëns, Scriabin, Richard Strauss, and Stravinsky all playing their own works. There are numerous important pianists including Backhaus, Cortot, d'Albert, Dohnanyi, Gabrilowitsch, Ganz, Hofmann, Horowitz, Landowska, Lhevinne, Reisenberg, Rubinstein, and Samaroff. The popular music documents playing styles of this earlier era with pianists such as Zez Confrey, Ferde Grofé, Fritz Kreisler, Ernesto Lecuona, Richard Rogers, and Victor Youmans. Rolls of every major company are represented in the collection.
Subjects
Bibliographic information
- Earliest date
- 1905
- Latest date
- 2012
- Access
- Open for research; material must be requested at least two business days in advance of intended use. Contact the Archive for assistance.
- Source
- Purchase; 2010.
- Note
- Denis Condon (1933-2012) trained at the Sydney Conservatory and became a music teacher and educator. He developed an interest in the reproducing player piano when his father purchased an Ampico piano when Denis was fifteen. Over the next sixty years he amassed a collection of over 7540 piano rolls and ten instruments. From his home he hosted social evenings every two months where rolls were played for the assembled guests. He constructed, together with his friend and engineer, Peter Phillips, a Duo-Art cabinet player (or Vorsetzer) which played rolls in concert throughout Australia and New Zealand. The cabinet player was also used to record the Grieg Concerto performed by Percy Grainger with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra.
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