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

pianist A pianist ( , ) is a musician who plays the piano. A pianist's repertoire may include music from a diverse variety of styles, such as traditional classical music, jazz piano, jazz, blues piano, blues, and popular music, including rock music, ...

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 legal 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, ...

to the recordings. In the case of Paul Procopolis, the reasons for the recording company,

Saga Records Saga Records was a British independent record label first established in 1958. It pioneered budget-priced light classical music and jazz LPs. Origins The Saga Records label emerged from Saga Films Ltd, a venture established by the British pianis ...

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 Sergio Fiorentino (22 December 1927 – 22 August 1998) was a 20th-century Italian classical pianist whose sporadic performing career spanned five decades. There is quite a bit of footage of his playing that survives, in addition to audio re ...

, including the complete Chopin waltzes, extracts from

Bach Johann Sebastian Bach (German: �joːhan zeˈbasti̯an baχ ( – 28 July 1750) was a German composer and musician of the late Baroque period. He is known for his prolific output across a variety of instruments and forms, including the or ...

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

Liszt Franz Liszt (22 October 1811 – 31 July 1886) was a Hungarian composer, virtuoso pianist, conductor and teacher of the Romantic period. With a diverse body of work spanning more than six decades, he is considered to be one of the most pro ...

. 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 Albert Ferber (29 March 191111 January 1987) was a Swiss pianist who had an international performing career that spanned four decades and took him across the world. Training Albert Ferber was a classical pianist and teacher. He was born in Lucer ...

(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 in ...

. 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. Biography 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 a ...

) with the

Vienna Symphony The Vienna Symphony (Vienna Symphony Orchestra, ) 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 Theater an der Wien. History ...

under

Hans Swarowsky Hans Swarowsky (September 16, 1899September 10, 1975) was an Austrian conductor of Hungarian birth. Swarowsky was born in Budapest, Hungary. He studied the art of conducting under Felix Weingartner and Richard Strauss. Jiří Vysloužil ...

. 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