The performances heard in the present volume of The Rubinstein Collection include material from his very first and very last recording sessions for HMV—His Master's Voice—which in those years was a division of the London-based Gramophone Company and an affiliate of RCA Victor in the United States. Although Rubinstein had probably made at least one acoustical 78 rpm recording for the Polish Favorit label in 1910 or thereabouts and had certainly made a series of piano rolls for the Aeolian Duo-Art and Ampico Pianola companies in the United States between 1919 and 1925. his career as a serious recording artist did not begin until 1928, when Fred Gaisberg, one of the industry's pioneers, persuaded him to visit The Gramophone Company's Studio C in the Small Queen's Hall, London, and give the procedure a fresh try. With the old acoustical process, Rubinstein said, the piano had always sounded