Please accept our apologies that, due to technical issues, this concert was not livestreamed as advertised.

This concert is part of the Summer Music Festival at the National Musicians' Church will be in-person at Holy Sepulchre, EC1A 2DQ and is free to attend.

Our concerts are made possible through the generosity of our audiences and we welcome donations, upon booking or after the concert with a suggested amount of £5 per person.

Michael Broadway has made a study of Pianola performance for over thirty years and has played at the South Bank, the Barbican, St Paul’s Cathedral, St John’s Smith Square and Symphony Hall Birmingham, as well as broadcasting on Radio 3, Radio 4 and BBC 1. Concerts abroad include Rome, Prague, Budapest and in Venice for the Biennale di Venezia. In April this year he played at the Royal Albert Hall to a capacity audience in the Elgar Room, the first time in the Hall’s 150 history that a pedal Pianola had featured there.

This afternoon he is playing his Orchestrelle Company ‘Push-Up’ Pianola of 1914 coupled to the church’s piano. Many would think this no different from listening to a CD; simply switch it on and it plays. Reproducing pianos such as the Duo-Art or the Ampico certainly do this as they are operated by an electric motor, but the music rolls for those instruments have been recorded by a pianist and therefore contain all dynamic and tempo changes encoded into the paper music roll.

Here we have something different. The rolls being played today were made as direct transcriptions of the musical score, note for note on to graph paper in a mathematical and mechanical way and require the intervention of a player to coax a musical performance from the bare notes. If the roll were simply set going, all that would result would be an a tempo rendition played at the same volume throughout and the pedals and levers on the instrument assist the player in avoiding this. Thus it is possible to explore the entire dynamic range of the piano being played, as well as subtle nuances of tempo rubato.

Today’s performance, as with all live music, will be unique; in the hands (and feet) of another player, the same music could sound completely different.

For more information, please visit   www.pianola-part.freeuk.com

 Programme:

A Children’s Overture                                         Roger Quilter  

Arranged for Piano Duet

Mazurka Op.10 No.1                                             Edward Elgar

Five Studies for Pianoforte  Dorothy Howell                       

Allegro – Moderato – Presto – Andante – Allegro       

Five Pieces for Pianoforte                                   H Balfour Gardiner

Molto Allegro – Adagio non troppo – London Bridge – Andante con moto – Gavotte

Capriol – Suite for Piano Duet                               Peter Warlock   

Basse-Danse – Pavane – Tordion – Bransles – Pieds-en-L’Air – Mattachins (Sword Dance)