After learning about the Julius Block collection from John Maltese in 2003, my partner Scott Kessler and I decided to pursue the idea of releasing a collection of these cylinders on our CD label. By 2004, contractual arrangements with the Pushkin House had been formalized. Subsequently, we were invited to visit their archive to listen to the cylinders and supervise copying them into digital form. The phonogram archive informed me that I would be working with their audio engineers, using their electrical playback cylinder apparatus and 24-bit digital recording system.

In April 2005, John Maltese, Scott Kessler, and I traveled to St. Petersburg with generous help from the Estate of John Stratton, Stephen R. Clarke, Executor, and the University of Georgia’s Office of Vice President for Research. Upon our arrival, Galina Kopytova, who had originally led John Maltese to these cylinders, generously opened her home to us, and on the following day, we began work at the Pushkin House. We were given an inventory of the Block collection, believed to be his own catalogue, which he called his “Phonogrammothek.” Some of the cylinders were identified as to performer and composition, but only less frequently were specific recording dates given. Annotations indicated the cylinders now held at the Pushkin House. Their collection of Block cylinders numbers about 215, of which about 100 contain performances of classical music. During our ten-day stay, we worked with a team of three archive engineers to secure the best possible sound from these primitive recordings. Two excellent translators were on hand to facilitate our work, which proceeded smoothly and pleasurably. As we listened, it became clear that our Russian colleagues, genuinely enthusiastic about the Block collection, were pleased that a world-audience would at last have the opportunity to hear this material. We were immediately impressed with their technical skill in handling the reproduction of the cylinders, together with the breadth of their musical knowledge.

It is impossible to describe the elation that we felt listening to nineteenth century pianists, violinists, and singers – none of whom we could have dreamed we would ever hear. We began by auditioning each cylinder. Several transfers were then made using different sized styli to achieve optimum sonic clarity. We found that the cylinders had not been recorded at a standard speed and consequently, we had to adjust the machine for each cylinder to obtain the correct pitch. This proved to be easy for works where we knew key signatures, but we had to make educated guesses for unfamiliar music, knowing that pitch adjustments could be made later.

We held our breaths as each cylinder was placed onto the playback machine, wondering how it would sound and what sort of performance it would be. The first ones were by a soprano called Mme. Nikita, whose name we only vaguely knew. We were at once enthralled by her singing, especially by her fleet coloratura and perfectly executed trill at the end of “Quando Repito” from Lucia. She would certainly be an operatic sensation today. Next, we listened to Cylinder 42, the first movement of Arensky’s D Minor Trio. The sound was remote but audible. But then, the pitch began to rise higher and higher. Within a minute, the music was playing at almost an octave above score pitch. Apparently, during the recording of this cylinder, Block’s machine had slowed down to almost half its original speed. To our immense disappointment, the same flaw afflicted Josef Hofmann’s recording of Mendelssohn’s “Song Without Words, op. 38, no. 5.” I had grave doubts as to whether we could use either of these recordings. Returning home, I sent copies of both recordings to my colleague, Dimitrios Antsos, who had helped us with a number of pitch-correction problems in the past. Using software that he wrote, he was able to analyze each incremental change in pitch and make the necessary corrections to keep the pitch constant. His work on these two recordings is nothing short of miraculous.

Another cylinder, which proved to be seriously defective, but in a different way, was Handel’s “Passacaglia” played by Michael and Joseph Press. The announcement at the beginning of the cylinder is clear enough but when the music begins, the sound fades in and out with each revolution of the cylinder. It seems apparent that the cutting stylus was not making proper contact with the wax surface. Fortunately, the problem abates as the music continues, and we decided to include it because of its historic importance.

Most of the cylinders we auditioned were acceptable, though some were much noisier than others. I should explain that making recordings in the 1890s was completely uncharted territory for anyone outside of Thomas Edison’s circle. He and his assistants had given Block rudimentary instruction in the operation of the phonograph, as we know from reading his memoir, but the recordings he made were all results of trial and error. Recording a good-sounding cylinder was no easy task. The positioning of the recording horn was critical since there was no electrical amplification of the sound source. Additionally, the surface of the wax cylinder had to be perfectly smooth, and all parts of the recording machine had to be in perfect order. It is no wonder, then, that Block’s results were not always successful. Another reason for the poor sound of some cylinders could be that they were played back too often. The wax used for cylinders was quite soft and could not withstand numerous playbacks without noticeable sonic deterioration. I believe that this is the case particularly with the cylinders of Jascha Heifetz. The sound is faint, but not inaudible. Using headphones, one can discern the Heifetz vibrato and the confident, yet sensitive playing that always characterized his artistry.

Our last task at the archive was to transfer three cylinders of spoken material, and I feel that I should explain something of their provenance. Cylinders 245 and 247 both contain the voice of Count Leo Tolstoy, recorded in 1895. Particularly noteworthy is Cylinder 245, where one can also hear Countess Tolstoy, recorded the same day, and then, Tolstoy’s daughter and granddaughter, recorded nearly 33 years later in 1927. Block left a written account of the making of these cylinders.

We often had the pleasure of a visit from Sophia Andreyevna, (the countess) and her children, who had taken a fancy to my wife. Lev Nikolaievich sometimes joined them; and, becoming better acquainted with him, I ventured one day to ask leave to immortalize his voice. He was not unwilling…he chose a chapter from his “Evangel”. I never had a harder task with any artist…From the outset I was anxious. I feared failure because he spoke very low, so that I was obliged to bring the speaking-tube close to his mouth. I dared not interrupt his reading for fear that he might change his mind and refuse to continue. I saw he was irritated. He repeatedly pushed my arm aside and then talked at a greater distance from the mouthpiece. Nevertheless, the record was so far a success that he himself felt satisfied with the reproduction. He then continued the chapter on a second cylinder, and after him his wife’s voice was recorded on the same phonogram, I then asked Tolstoy to add his name and date, which he did in saying: ‘govvril yaa Lev Tolstoy ee yavaw gaynaa”, which literally translated would be: - “spoke I, Leo Tolstoy and -his wife.”

During the winter of 1927, Tolstoy’s daughter Tatyana gave a lecture at Vevey on the great writer. Being eager to listen once more to her father’s voice, recorded thirty-three years before, she called with her daughter and found time to listen to a number of records by well-known artists. On one of her father’s and mother’s records was a blank space, sufficient to record her own voice and her daughter’s too. Thus this interesting record now contains the voices of three generations of the Tolstoy family, together with the date in each case.¹

The final spoken cylinder we transferred was number 283 in Block’s catalogue bearing the identification “RUBINSTEIN, LAWROWSKAJA, TSHAIKOWSKI, SAFONOF, HUBERT etc.” This recording has turned out to be quite mysterious and controversial as you will see. The Pushkin House archivists told us that this cylinder was recorded during a party in 1890 where Tchaikovsky and other guests were trying to convince Anton Rubinstein to play the piano for the phonograph. Although Rubinstein declined to play, the archivists assert that he speaks a few words into the phonograph along with Tchaikovsky and others.

We were already familiar with this recording because it had been issued in 1998 on the Koch Schwann label as the final track on a three-disc set devoted to modern recordings of Tchaikovsky’s piano and orchestral works. When I listened to the Koch CD, I heard a series of short phrases, spoken by several people of both sexes, as well as someone whistling a musical phrase. Nowhere on the recording could I detect the spoken names of either Tchaikovsky or Rubinstein, and I wondered how the identity of their voices had been verified. There was something else about this recording that made me uneasy. Strange-sounding artificial noise had been inserted between each vocal segment, which clearly indicated that the original recording had been altered. I was eager to hear the cylinder itself to discover why, and I felt certain that the archivists at the Pushkin House would be able to answer my questions.

We requested to hear the cylinder, but we were told that we could only listen to a transfer which they had already made. Apparently, the cylinder was deemed too valuable to be played unnecessarily. The archive’s transfer comprised short spoken phrases as in the Koch version, but there was no artificial noise inserted between them – only a quick fade down and up of the cylinder noise. An archive engineer explained that each segment on the cylinder was separated by a band of un-grooved wax. When transferring it, he had to move the playback head manually from band to band, and the phrases were edited together later. Although I would have liked to have heard and examined the original cylinder, I was satisfied with his explanation.

When I returned home, I made a direct comparison between the Koch transfer and the one given to us by the Pushkin House archivists. Once I had removed the artificial noise from the Koch version, I found both transfers to be much the same, but with one notable difference. On our new version, the recording concludes with a deep strong male voice followed by a higher one speaking just a word or two. On the Koch version, these two phrases had been unaccountably switched to the beginning of the recording. It is worth mentioning that the sonic character of these two voices differs markedly from the rest of the recording, which may indicate that they were recorded at another time. The Pushkin House archivists had provided us with a Russian transcript of what they could hear on the recording, along with identifications of the various speakers. For the past two years, we have been working closely with a native Russian speaker, Paulina Anderson-Dinitz, whose keen ear in deciphering the Russian announcements on these cylinders has been invaluable. I asked her to listen to Cylinder 283 and translate anything she could understand. After listening numerous times, she was able to translate enough of the words to get a grasp on what was being said. There is no doubt that several of the speakers are trying to exhort Anton Rubinstein to play, but except for his name being cited in Block’s catalogue, there is no other evidence that Rubinstein speaks. The translation that accompanies the Koch version states that Rubinstein says “no”, but after repeated playings, Paulina could not hear it. Reading Block’s journal and other writings only deepens the mystery. We know that one of his greatest ambitions was to introduce the phonograph to Anton Rubinstein and secure a recording of the great pianist playing. The following entry in his journal recounts one of his two attempts to do so.

At the time many of my musical friends had been completely convinced of the importance of the phonograph as an ancillary to music. A conspiracy was afoot among them to get the Titan pianist [Rubinstein] to play for the phonograph. Tchaikovsky in particular had told him of the miraculous reproductions he had heard…

No arguments would induce him to come and hear it [the phonograph]. So a plot was hatched between us to take him by surprise. Safonof, Professor at the Moscow Conservatoire, arranged a card party for him, l and to this I was to bring the phonograph…

During that time Safonof and all his guests repeatedly asked him to consent and play into the phonograph. He would not listen to the idea. Pressed by his friends to give his reason, he said that he did not want to have his mistakes immortalized. An hour later Safonof rushed into the room and told me Rubinstein had consented to let me take a record….But then an irreparable catastrophe happened. The accumulator gave out! All hope of recording that evening was gone.²

If Block’s account is taken at face value, Rubinstein did not record that night, though it may be possible that the others had recorded prior to the failure of Block’s machine, in trying to exhort Rubinstein to speak. As previously mentioned, the voices on the cylinder could have been recorded on different occasions, but this fact does not bring us closer to a solution. Block recounts trying to persuade Rubinstein to record on another occasion but again without success. We also know that Block played the phonograph for Tchaikovsky at other times but Block never mentions the composer actually recording. The following anecdote left by author Leonid Sabaneyev recounts one of these occasions.

Another recollection concerns Tchaikovsky’s visit to the apartment of [Julius] Block (not the poet, but the owner of a large typewriter and bicycle shop in Moscow who was a passionate music lover and something of a patron of the arts).  Block had a phonograph, which he had received from America immediately after its invention.  It was the first and only one of its kind in Moscow…Block treated us to the ‘phonograph,’ which was then a primitive system with a wax cylinder.  It was far from perfection; after all, Edison had only just invented it.  Block asked Pyotr Ilyich [Tchaikovsky] to play something or, at the least, to say something.  Tchaikovsky frowned and tried to disappear before refusing decisively.  ‘I am a bad pianist and my voice is raspy.  Why should one eternalize it?’³

Since the other entries in the Phonogrammothek accurately identify the people recorded on the remaining cylinders, it would be odd for the entry corresponding to Cylinder 283 to be incorrect. The original copy of the Phonogrammothek from the archive in Berlin where Block originally left these cylinders contains the identical entry for Cylinder 283. But other than identifying names, the Phonogrammothek entry for this cylinder is ambiguous. Were all the voices, for example, recorded on the same date? And, since the speakers do not clearly identify themselves, there is ambiguity about which voice corresponds with which speaker. Since we have found no mention of this recording in Block’s journal or letters, we can assume that he didn’t consider it significant, but there is no reason to doubt the listing in his catalogue. Perhaps he felt such defeat at not being able to capture Rubinstein playing that he didn’t think it worth mentioning that he had recorded a few words by Rubinstein and Tchaikovsky. We have included in this booklet the identifications of the specific speakers given to us by the Pushkin House. We hope that future research will shed light on the lingering mysteries of this cylinder.

On returning from Russia, one of our first tasks was to attempt to identify the unfamiliar works recorded in the collection. We found that several had been incorrectly titled in Block’s catalogue. Incidentally, the two Arensky improvisations are actually improvised pieces, not published compositions entitled “Improvisation”. Cylinder 107 left us baffled. It is identified in Block’s catalogue as “Introduction to the opera Rafael”. In fact, Arensky made a piano arrangement of the introduction to his Rafael, but the score bears no resemblance to the Arensky recording. This cylinder does sound like a transcription from an orchestral work but as yet, we have not been able to identify it. Similarly, we had no luck with the three recordings of Egon Petri. Since Emanuel Moór’s name is announced on two of the cylinders, we thought that Petri might be playing compositions by Moór, but we found no matches among Moór’s published piano works. Noticing, however, that one of the three pieces is clearly announced by Petri as “Free Improvisation”, we have assumed that the other two pieces are likewise improvised. Five of the vocal selections have also eluded us, and we hope that listeners will help us to identify these correctly.

My personal contribution to this project has been the remastering of these primitive recordings. Put simply, my goal has been to bring the music as far forward as possible by reducing obtrusive noise in those spectrums where there is no music. I have spent hundreds of hours working with these recordings, agonizing over how much intervention to use in the conservation process. Digital technology gives us the power to remove noise quite effectively from old recordings, but it needs to be done judiciously. Otherwise, the results are usually injurious to the musical content of the recording.

In preparing these recordings for publication, I first removed thousands of transient noises, commonly known as clicks and pops, which interfered with the flow of the music. I then experimented with various degrees of noise reduction to determine how the music was affected. Some reduction of the surface noise undoubtedly helped to bring the music forward, but in every case, I used less reduction than I had expected. Try though I might, I was not able to make much improvement in the poorer-sounding recordings. Yet I feel it would have been irresponsible of us not to include them in this compilation. I should mention that two of the cylinders presented here are not part of the Pushkin House collection but are owned by New York based collector and author, Allen Koenigsberg. These are Cylinders 123 and 40, CD 1: Track 14 and CD 2: Track 27. Years ago, Mr. Koenigsberg transferred these cylinders to cassette by placing a microphone in front of the horn of an acoustic cylinder playback machine. Unfortunately, we had to use this poor transfer since we were unable to gain access to the original cylinders.

The listener should be forewarned that even the best-sounding recordings in the collection are sonically primitive, and some of the poorer ones are practically inaudible. Yet, through the heavy blanket of noise, one can feel a palpable spontaneity rarely captured on early commercial recordings. It is clear that these are snap shots of social gatherings where the performers are relaxed and the on-lookers are appreciative. Just imagine the idea of witnessing the recording of sound for the first time. Not all of Block’s cylinders were made during these early days of the phonograph, but even the ones made much later possess a similar aura of excitement. Beyond this first impression, one can glean real musical content in these recordings if one has the curiosity and patience to listen repeatedly and with undivided attention. I recommend using high-quality headphones for optimal results. Eventually, one’s brain will begin to filter out the noise, and the musical aspects of each performance will emerge with unexpected vividness. What may start out sounding like noise with no musical content can end up providing the listener with hours of fascinating discovery. It may take some effort, but the rewards are worth the trouble.

Nearly six years have passed since John Maltese set us on this course. All of us working on the project have been stimulated, challenged, and yes, at times frustrated by the hurdles we encountered. We are extremely pleased to be able to release this edition to the public and pay homage to Julius Block, who at the dawn of recording recognized the real potential of Edison’s phonograph.

©Ward Marston, 2008

¹ Julius Block, Mortals and Immortals: Edison, Nikisch, Tchaikofsky, Tolstoy. Episodes Under Three Tzars. Unpublished manuscript, distributed by Yale University Library, New Haven, Connecticut, H.S.R., ML300.4B651 M84, with the compliments of Walter E. Block, Bermuda, pp. 77–78.

² Block, Mortals and Immortals, pp. 21–22.

³ Alexander Poznansky, editor Tchaikovsky Through Other’s Eyes, translated from Russian by Ralph C. Burr, Jr. and Robert J. Bird, published by Indiana University Press, Bloomington, Indiana,1999, p. 216