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The NY Times had a fascinating article detailing a new recording (on the Pierian Recording Society label) of Claude Debussy playing his own music...from 1913! It's amazing stuff, with two short samples at the left of the article:

The Welte-Mignon mechanism used in the Debussy recordings represents an extreme sophistication of the player piano's perforations on paper and pumping feet. Sensors measure the pressures exerted on individual notes. Other systems, the program notes for the Pierian CD say, added musical nuances after the rolls were made. Unlike Ampico and Duo-Art, Welte recorded them in real time. Listening, one looks over the shoulder for ghosts. One is at a seance, with the great man rapping on the table from a distance to make his presence known.

And from ArkivMusic.com, where you can purchase this CD:

Introduced in 1904, the Welte Mignon reproducing piano was a brilliant invention for its time. While the pianist played, it recorded on a paper roll not only the pitches and durations, but the dynamics of each note or chord and pedaling as the pianist played. The first significant attempts to preserve these rolls in audio recordings were made in 1948 when Dick Simonton and his wife Helena visited the co-inventors, Welte and Bockisch, in Freiburg. As significant as those recordings (issued on Columbia) were, the reproducing mechanism was in disrepair producing fluctuations in tempi and a limited dynamic range.

In the 1960s Simonton passed along his extensive knowledge of the Welte Mignon to Kenneth Caswell. For the last 40 years Caswell has worked towards as accurate as possible representation of these rolls and now feels that he has been able to realize their full expressive content. Working with a restored 1923 Feurich piano and using two vintage Neumann microphones he has recorded his first disc in a series devoted to his transfers. Bernard Holland writing in The New York Times says: "Kenneth Caswell in Austin, Texas, makes Debussy sound with all the nuance and resonance of those who interpret him on records today."

Simply amazing stuff!

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