Museum "Collection" presents a new series, "Performed by the Author," under which we will regularly publish the rarest and most unusual masterpieces from the museum's music library.

The Sound Lbrary of the museum "Collection" is one of the largest in the world and is unparalleled in the richness and diversity of its exhibits. For instance, in addition to the familiar phonograph cylinders and gramophone records, it brings together a wide range of perforated music rolls for player pianos and residence organs from the late 19th and early 20th centuries. As a rule, these were created using special devices called "autoperforators," which were connected to the keys and independently punched holes in blank paper during a pianist's or organist's performance. Thus, this technology represents the first method of authentic audio recording capable of capturing the individual nuances of a musician's touch. Each roll produced by this method is a unique crystal from the past, encapsulating something fundamentally fragile and ephemeral –a shorthand record of a musician's hand movements, complete with their distinct style, temperament, and talent.

The Sound Library features more than a hundred rolls recorded by the great composers of the turn of the 20th century, including C. Debussy, C. Saint-Saëns, M. Ravel, G. Gershwin, A. Rubinstein, V. Horowitz, I. Stravinsky, S. Rachmaninoff, S. Prokofiev, and many others. In that distant era, such audio media, along with the player pianos and residence organs associated with them, enjoyed unprecedented popularity. However, shortly after the invention of gramophones and newer recording technologies, they faded into oblivion and are incredibly rare today. The museum "Collection" brings together the world's largest collection of perforated rolls and mechanical instruments capable of playing them. Thanks to years of work by the museum's restoration center, researchers, and sound engineer, these unique testaments to musical history have found their voice once again. By restoring them, our specialists have, in a sense, brought the great musicians of the past back to life: their performances, which harbour their very souls, are preserved in the rolls and reach us a century later – just as the light of distant stars, long extinguished in a faraway galaxy, only now reaches the Earth.

As part of this series, we will introduce you to the most striking and interesting of these unique rolls once a month. We kick off the series with the music of Camille Saint-Saëns, performed by the author. You can listen to this unique recording and see the Welte-Mignon and Steinway-Duo-Art player pianos in action, reproducing the performance preserved on the roll stored in the museum "Collection" website. Read more about Saint-Saëns' life and work in the "Authors" section.