Grieg Piano Concerto - Percy Grainger piano roll; Andrew Davis conducts

The Last Night of the 1988 Promenade Concerts in London’s Royal Albert Hall provided music-lovers with a unique novelty. Percy Grainger (1882-1961), one of the foremost exponents of the Grieg Piano Concerto, had made a pair of piano rolls of the work that were issued in 1921. For this Proms performance, a ’player piano’ was situated on the platform and operated by a technician sitting among the violins. The piano rolls were duly inserted into the piano’s mechanism and Grainger’s 1921 solo performance was then accompanied by the BBCSO under Andrew Davis’s baton, much to the delight of the Last Night Prommers.