Zenph Re-Performance



[Sony Music/RCA Red Seal/Zenph Studios]



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Zenph Re-Performance is a dizzyingly high-tech copying strategy to present old recordings with modern clarity. A computer analyzes an old piano record, full of surface noise, and reproduces each note digitally on a customized piano—in this case, a 1909 9-foot Steinway D grand, such as Rachmaninoff would have played. It is like an ultra-sophisticated player piano. And this CD has an additional twist. This collection of 13 encore pieces played by the great Sergei Rachmaninoff lets you hear the music as if from inside Rachmaninoff’s head. The pieces are presented twice. Once in regular stereo and again in “headphone” mode. In headphone mode, we are told, you hear the music from the exact vantage point where Rachmaninoff’s head would have been as he played.



You could argue that the Zenph process is a bit gimmicky. But it is a challenging educational experience to separate an old master’s playing from the rounded, soft, nostalgic sound you get from ancient records. Heard under these modern clinical conditions, Rachmaninoff emerges as a pianist of grace and calm. He is not a bit showy. His fortes are bright but not fiery, his pedaling is conservative. His playing retains its seductive subtlety. His own compositions shine with virtuosity of a delicate kind. The Scherzo from Mendelssohn’s “Midsummer Night’s Dream,” bouncing along happily, is a delight. The shy, flirtatious ending to Rachmaninoff’s own arrangement of a famous Bach Gigue melts the heart.



Alarmingly, the modern recordings show imperfections that would have been less audible before. Unclear passages and occasional flubbed notes made me wonder if Rachmaninoff had been a bit too relaxed in the studio, figuring that rough places would be planed by the recording process. Ha, ha! Caught, after all these years!



In the end, I prefer the old records. I kind of like that old surface noise. I could not imagine falling in love with Rachmaninoff the way I did when I saw the movie “Shine” without the sweet sound of a needle on an old record, allowing you to hear Rachmaninoff playing his Third Piano Concerto as if from a distant haze. There is something to be said for hearing the piano as Rachmaninoff played it, but also something to be said for listening to a record as Rachmaninoff heard it. Happily now we can have it both ways. —Mary Kunz Goldman