Welte-Mignon parlor grand piano 

Steinway & Sons
Hamburg
1925
Steinway & Sons Collection, New York / Hamburg 

At the beginning of the 20th century, the company M. Welte & Söhne in Freiburg in the Breisgau developed a recording and reproduction process for the piano. The sound carrier was a paper roll that recorded the pianist's playing by punching holes in it and making it reproducible on appropriately equipped grand pianos. Famous virtuosos could thus be experienced for the first time in a relatively authentic way beyond live performance and the concert hall. The recordings of musicians and composers such as Carl Reinecke (1824-1910), Claude Debussy (1862-1918), Gustav Mahler (1860-1910) and Max Reger (1873-1916) are highly interesting for interpretation research today. 

Many piano manufacturing companies entered the booming business of “self-playing pianos”, including Steinway & Sons. The Aeolian Company, the American Piano Company (Ampico) and, in Europe, M. Welte & Söhne became partners. Steinway sent its grand pianos to these companies to be equipped with reproduction technology. The grand pianos were designed to be slightly longer to accommodate the automatic player, which was driven by an electric motor. This generated a vacuum that triggered the piano mechanism at the perforated areas of the paper. By the end of the 1920s, the reproduction piano had fallen completely into disuse due to better, modern technologies.