Paul Procopolis is the name given to a non-existent classical

pianist A pianist ( , ) is an individual musician who plays the piano. Since most forms of Western music can make use of the piano, pianists have a wide repertoire and a wide variety of styles to choose from, among them traditional classical music, ja ...

who was credited as a performer on various recordings. With the advent of cheap long-playing records, unscrupulous companies issued records of material under pseudonyms to avoid paying royalties or because they did not own the

copyright A copyright is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the exclusive right to copy, distribute, adapt, display, and perform a creative work, usually for a limited time. The creative work may be in a literary, artistic, educatio ...

to the recordings. In the case of Paul Procopolis, the reasons for the recording company, Saga Records issuing recordings pseudonymously are uncertain, as they would have had the copyright to at least some of the material. According to Robin O'Connor (see Sources), the company's intention was to compile pre-existing recordings by several different performers on one album and present them as the work of a single performer. The name Paul Procopolis was used to reissue recordings by the pianist Sergio Fiorentino, including the complete Chopin waltzes, extracts from

Bach Johann Sebastian Bach (28 July 1750) was a German composer and musician of the late Baroque period. He is known for his orchestral music such as the ''Brandenburg Concertos''; instrumental compositions such as the Cello Suites; keyboard wor ...

's ''Well-Tempered Clavier'', and works by

Liszt Franz Liszt, in modern usage ''Liszt Ferenc'' . Liszt's Hungarian passport spelled his given name as "Ferencz". An orthographic reform of the Hungarian language in 1922 (which was 36 years after Liszt's death) changed the letter "cz" to simpl ...

. Some of the LPs included a biography of Procopolis who, it was alleged, was born in Athens in 1934, studied with Nadia Boulanger in Paris and lived and taught in Greece. The biography was written by Robin O'Connor. Various other LPs give no biographical information at all. Ernst Lumpe has attempted to identify the real artists in the Procopolis recordings. Other pianists whose recordings were issued under this name included Bernard Vitebsky (his Beethoven Concerto No. 3), Albert Ferber (an LP of "The World's Best Loved Piano Music") and

Clive Lythgoe Clive Lythgoe (9 April 1927 – 4 September 2006), was a leading British classical pianist of the 1950s and 1960s, popular in the UK and the United States, where he was considered to be "Britain's answer to Liberace" Early life He was born i ...

. The recording of the Second Chopin Concerto has been identified as that of the Brazilian pianist Carmen Vitis Adnet (who lived in Vienna and was married to pianist

Hans Graf Hans Graf (born 15 February 1949 in Marchtrenk) is an Austrian conductor. As a child, Graf learned the violin and the piano. He studied at the Musikhochschule in Graz, Austria, and graduated with diplomas in piano and conducting. He also partic ...

) with the

Vienna Symphony The Vienna Symphony (Vienna Symphony Orchestra, german: Wiener Symphoniker) is an Austrian orchestra based in Vienna. Its primary concert venue is the Vienna Konzerthaus. In Vienna, the orchestra also performs at the Musikverein and at the The ...

under Hans Swarowsky. Further recordings (such as the First Chopin Concerto) remain unidentified.

Sources

* The Fiorentino recordings issued under the name of Procopolis are identified a
Ernst Lumpe's website
* Robin O'Connor, the man who assembled many of the Paul Procopolis LPs, recounts how they came into being on th

{{DEFAULTSORT:Procopolis, Paul Fictional musicians House names Musical hoaxes