This seems a sensible rundown of the xylophone's history:

http://www.vsl.co.at/en-us/70/3196/3204/3205/5729.vsl

Odd that neither the African instruments nor the instrument nowadays are without resonators but the European variety seems to have been, precisely at the time it entered the orchestra... on the other hand no one puts a percussion instrument directly on a table-top and the straw supports might have at least let the sound out a bit. (Or rather they must have!)

I wouldn't be surprised if even the xylophone part in Salome had been written for a four-row instrument (Strauss specifies 'Holz- und Strohinstrument'), which would oddly enough probably make the upward white-note scales in the dance of the seven veils easier than on the modern instrument...

I was indeed wondering how the Sinfonietta part could be played on a slide trombone, although Janacek isn't known for his idiomatic writing for any instrument so it could just have been one of his maggots, as they used to say. I wonder how often the part is played on valved trombones in the "West". Anyone who's going this weekend - keep your eyes peeled please.

And for anyone like me, who gets lost easily, a shortcut

I'm moved to wake up this thread having recently heard the recording of Ravel orchestral music by Anima Eterna conducted by Jos van Immerseel.

Immerseel and his band have collected a remarkable array of instruments for the purpose. The piano in the left hand concerto is a 1905 Érard and everyone else has moved mountains to give themselves hardware from Ravel's day.

Of course there are fairly substantial differences between the instruments Ravel knew and the ones we play today: the French bassoon has practically died out outside Francophonie and even in French-speaking lands it seems every few years another basson section gives up and goes Heckel. French French horns often had a piston mechanism and were usually played with a light vibrato (a bit like a tasteful flute one). The brasses (and saxophones) were generally smaller-bored if I understand correctly, the percussion instruments were smaller and lighter, the strings were slightly differently set up.

Even the instruments which are mechanically much the same were played slightly differently - flute vibrato was faster but smaller (even from Moyse himself), the oboe and clarinet sound was brighter.

But shortly after I bought the Immerseel disc I bought the Andante box I've mentioned elsewhere, of recordings from Ravel's time or shortly after, including Ravel's own recording of Bolero. Despite the instrument collection, the Immerseel sounds nothing like these old recordings.

Indeed, when one looks a bit closer at the instrument list the collection itself isn't quite all it's cracked up to be. Some of the clarinets are simple-system rather than Klosé-Buffet (makes a huge difference in the solo near the beginning of Bolero). Two of the bassoons aren't actually Buffet or even Selmer but 'built by the players themselves according to the tonal aesthetic of the period'. (Which might explain a bit why they don't sound either German or French.) The contrabassoon is indeed a Heckel (!), the bass clarinet also appears to be German. The 1905 piano sounds lovely, but, well, the concerto is from 1929-1930 - so of course it does and doesn't sound much like the piano in Cortot's 1939 recording. A lot of the tempi are very different indeed from the 1930s recordings... although I suppose you wouldn't necessarily always want the Pavane to zip by in 4'50".

Main thing though is... the musical approach doesn't really have anything to do with what the players from the 1930s seem to have done. Bolero is on the Immerseel disc and twice in the Andante box (conducted by Ravel and Coppola). The trombone solo is particularly spectatular: the notated glissandi are pretty subtle but there are lots of unwritten ones. But the main difference is the use of rubato in the melody - Immerseel's lot plod solidly on, Ravel's and Coppola's bands constantly bend the rhythm, often in reasonably consistent ways that Immerseel doesn't seem to have tried to do.

I've always had a pet dream of having a period-instrument orchestra based on 1930s Paris - you could do Ravel, Debussy, Stravinsky, Varèse, Prokofiev and lots of other magical things. What a shame someone with a chance to actually realise such a thing has left so many stones unturned...

Anyone else know both the new recording and the box of old ones?