Dead pianists play 'live' again

New audio capture technology recreates original perfomances.

Music lovers can now listen to near perfect reproductions of performances from some of the great pianists from the past.

Advances in audio technology enable all the nuances of a pianist's playing style to be captured from original analogue recordings, reproduced digitally and played back on computer-controlled grand pianos.

Digital processing will remove the background noise and hissing that plagues analogue recordings made in the early twentieth century, The Times reports today .

Original audio recordings are analysed and converted into high-resolution Midi, an extension of the industry standard Midi (musical instrument digital interface) protocol for controlling electronic instruments.

High-resolution Midi offers a number of improvements over the older standard. Finer graduations in note levels and the factoring in of the weighting of key strikes and pedal presses, all contribute towards a faithful reproduction of a performance.

This technology is being pioneered by North Carolina-based Zenph Studios. It aims to move beyond pianos and recreate music played on a variety of other instruments in the future.