Abstract
Early recordings are widely acknowledged as primary sources in musicological research within multiple academic disciplines, as they offer valuable insights into the aesthetic tendencies of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century musicians. Crucially, they capture and preserve performance styles, traditions and musical approaches of an age that has long-since passed. This paper discusses mechanical recording processes in the context of a research case-study on Austro-German performance traditions, which was a part of a larger Leverhulme-funded project (Re)constructing Early Recordings: a guide for historically-informed performance. As the title suggests, the project focused upon the technologies used to produce early recordings and, more specifically, the ways in which those recordings reveal performance practices of the past. The project was highly practical: a series of performing musicians were invited to produce brand new recordings, albeit using early recording technologies, period instruments, and historically informed performance practices. The aim was to reconstruct and study the circumstances in which historic recordings were originally produced, in order that we might better understand what they reliably preserve of past performing musicians that are, nowadays, a rich source of inspiration for musicians of the present. This paper presents one of the case-studies, which focused on reconstructions of historic recordings by pianists Ilona