Tweedpipe

What a wondeful site B.E is, and especially this Italian forum, together with assistance from BEVS.

Back in 2016 I made a request if anyone could help me procure a copy of a musical manuscript that I'd traced to a musical institute in Bergamo, which had been composed by a family member in the mid 19th century. Lorna immediately took up the challenge and within a few weeks I'd received the 28 pages. Marvellous job!
BEVS being into genealogy then offered to find more info on my g-grandfather, and find she certainly did, which together with my own research uncovered a great deal of invaluable musical-related information.

Since 2016 it's been an uphill, time-consuming struggle trying to find someone capable of playing and performing an mp3 recording. This would appear a relatively simple task, and some initial interest was shown by those semi-pro pianists I contacted, but on being sent a copy of the score there was no follow-up, which in part I believe was due to it's virtuosic nature, technically being extremely difficult. Covid restrictions too didn't help. Obviously I was well prepared to pay for any outstanding student or semi-professional capable of playing a solo piano version of this concerto.
Then 2 years ago via a piano forum, I made contact with a semi-retired professional pianist in the States. He graciously agreed to assist, and last year, 5 years after the start of my quest, I received an excellent, almost complete mp3 recording which I now treasure.
That should normally end the saga, but I've recently been put in touch with another semi-retired professional pianist in UK who has agreed to me making a live recording of him performing the concerto - again a piano solo version obviously as I was never able to track down the full orchestra score which my g-grandfather would also have penned and may still exist in some remote musical archive.
I'm reminded that it will need some 10hrs or so practice to perfect the performance which confirms the difficulty of the composition. The practise time is reflected in his estimated fee which I have agreed to.
I've not been back to UK for a few years but will travel back just for this recording in early July which should be fun.
Again "enormous thanks" to Lorna and Bevs for making all this a reality! Amazing what B.E inter-forum co-operation can achieve.

Lorna at Vicenza

Wow. Thank you. Was it really back in 2016? I remember it like yesterday. The Italian I contacted at the library was truly helpful, scanning and emailing the 28 pages to me and pointing out the handwritten dedication on page one. A dedication that flummoxed us until one of those famous lightbulb moments when it suddenly hit me that the letters I thought were IC was actually a rather long U giving me the word: suonatore. I'm so pleased you've managed to progress further and look forward to seeing the video sometime soon. Best wishes x

Tweedpipe

Yep, getting on for 6 years already. Time certainly flies enjoying oneself on these forums.
Incidently that 'Lady Carden' to whom he officially dedicated the Concerto on the front cover, we(Bevs) failed to positively identify. No doubt one of his 'bit's on the side'. Which is probably no surprise with an Italian. Or is it......?

riv

## ....Sent from my Sinclair ZX81.....##

Are you REALLY still using that 1980s computer ??? Congrats if so............( I though I had difficulty throwing away functioning tech ~like my 12 year old mobile [ which still has the original 23 year old simcard in it ] ).

Tweedpipe

Not sure if you're still reading this but if you are, apologies for not having answered sooner. Yes I still have a Sinclair ZX81 but certainly not for internet use, although I am a fan of vintage computers. In fact this is coming from a favorite modified 2003 G4 PowerPC iMac.
If it was possible I'd add a tongue-in-cheek smiley to my ZX81 signature comment.

BEVS

Oops. Just seen this.

Thanks so much for the thanks Tweedpipe . It was a pleasure . Also highly interesting and fun.

I may well have another dig around as you never know what new snippet might show itself or what might have been missed.

I agree with Lorna too. It seems like just yesterday.

M

Tweedpipe

Hi Bevs!
If you were able to find time and eventually "dig around" a little more - genealogically speaking, that would be great. I've been tempted too to renew the Ancestry.com subscription to see if I can find out anything new.
Just for info, in my post #1 here I mentioned that I received an almost complete mp3 recording from an American pianist. To complement this, the trip back to UK I'd planned in July for another very professional pianist to make a live recording didn't happen due to several circumstances, but we've re-scheduled this for early Oct. I plan to take two HD cameras and separate audio recording to capture this, so hopefully I'll finally have an edited movie of the performance to share with family members, and also a YouTube link to others - 'think' Lorna & Bevs - who may still be interested.
I'll keep you posted........

Tweedpipe

Just a quick update on this saga, particularly for Lorna, Bevs and anyone else who may be interested.
Due to Covid rules travelling from France, I didn't make the UK trip in July, but was there a week ago where I achieved a goal I've been after for several years, namely making a video of a very competent musician performing a piano version of my great-grandfather's concerto.
Now back home, I'm busy editing together a video summarising the history of my g-gfather, why and how he emigrated to the UK and became a UK citizen etc. In the musical world he had a very successful career as a significant player and successful operatic conductor in London, touring frequently with many notable virtuosi and divas of the period.
I initially thought the video would be a reasonable size - less than 5Gb and when complete suitable for burning to a dvd and offering a copy to Lorna & Bevs. As I filmed in Full HD, plus adding many extra newsclips etc, it's now looking to be far larger when completed, so I may have to download to a larger capacity thumbdrive or even post an abridged version on YouTube (for restrictive viewing). I'll post again with an update when completed.
Keep safe, and get those additional autumn Covid booster jabs when required - should be getting ours next week.

Lorna at Vicenza

Thanks so much for the update. We are of course glad when BE is a help and working together gets things done properly. Of course Facebook and Twitter are different. I don't have Twitter and perhaps I'm less help on something like Facebook which is more wishy washy. I don't know. I have never left British Expats because it was my first ever forum, I still love it and I still think I can help and advise people.

Pulaski

I am not certain, but you should be able to find someone who can burn copies of the whole file to a blu-ray disc. Alternatively you could perhaps get someone to reduce the picture resolution slightly to make the file size compatible with a DVD. .... The resolution of the latest HD is so great that even with the latest 4K TVs it is unlikely that anyone would notice that the the resolution of the recording has been reduced slightly as the quality of video these days is far beyond the resolution of broadcast TV that most of us grew up watching.

Chocolate eclair

What a beautiful, happy story. Well done to all involved

Geordieborn

Well done!
Think Pulaski's idea to convert would be your best option, I've used Handbrake, Anyvideo and VLC in the past. They all are free but have so much functionality it can be too much if all you want to do is convert. However, there are simple "WikiHow" instructions out there to help. Never thought of Youtube, but now see you can upload 12hr video if your account is verified. I'm assuming you can upload any quality?

BEVS

So true Lorna & you have always been a bit of a shiny Italian style star in that respect.

Thank you Mr Tweedpipe. If and when it comes into being I would consider it a privilege to be offered a copy. So very kind and thoughtful of you.

Meanwhile I will have a bit of a new dig I think. I've been a bit off the grid of late what with one thing and another but it will be fun and interesting to see if there is a possibility of any new leads at all.

Tweedpipe

Thank you for this feed-back.
Not having a writable Blue-Ray drive, I thought of another possibility to counter the 4.7GB limit of a standard DVD, i.e.burn the completed video to a double layer DVD-R with 8.5GB capacity. As I have a very large collection of vintage Macs (not of the 'flasher' type I hasten to add) both desktop and portable versions - most of which incorporate a double layer (DL) DVD, I could try this depending on the final size of my video. From similar use I know that even a modest Core2Duo machine is still capable today of performing these tasks. Failing that, my all-time favourite (mid 2012 15" Core i7 MacBook A1286) may be the answer, imho it's just wicked that Apple don't make them like this anymore!
A few doubts I've read on many sites is that some brands of DL DVD's can be temperamental with unpredictable results, that plus I can't seem to see any DVD-R DL disks, as I've rarely been successful burning to standard DVD+R disks.
As you state, the final and easiest solution could well be to reduce the picture resolution slightly to make the file size compatible with a standard DVD.
Never a dull moment here..........

Tweedpipe

Interesting, thanks!
I have both Handbrake and VLC available. Used Handbreak once but never really explored all of it's potential. Have used VLC for screencasting and for video playback, an excellent app which I should learn more about. I currently don't have a YTube account for hosting.
Will inform once I have satisfactorily completed the project........