Recordings vs Live Performance

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

I liked Bernstein's policy when recording with DG - recording live, but topping and tailing with minor corrections, especially the endings so as to remove applause that could become irritating on repetition.

[Hornspieler]

Hornspieler's post (which, incidentally, is marked 'Deleted by Hornspieler') minus the attachment which he has copied:

Thank you so much, FF for resoring my original post.

I can now move on to answer Doversole's replies to what I said at that time.

HS

[Sir Velo]

Hornspiele


I think this is very unfair to both performers and the listeners who are unable to attend live concerts for various reasons or prefer to listen at home. I am one of them. Am I listening to something grossed-up with no genuine musical value? And as for performers, from many videos that are available on Presto Classical site, I have an impression that the performers are creating something different from the music performed live, and are committing it onto the recording.

Coincidentally, I posted this on the Early Music board about the Vivaldi concert broadcast on Sunday.

This was a thoroughly enjoyable concert. There’s something about Vivaldi performed live. It reminds me that his (instrumental) music was meant to be 'performed'.

http://www.for3.org/forums/showthread.php?15004-Il-Pomo-d-Oro-plays-Vivaldi-EML-10-April&p=552643#post552643

All the same, I treasure all those excellent Vivaldi recordings by many soloists and ensembles, and am never tired of listening to them.

I'm sure there's been a thread on this very subject in the not too distant past - or is this a case of deja vu? I seem to remember JLW getting equally upset when the limitations of home listening were raised.

However, why get upset if someone has a different view? Clearly, HS was a performer and, as such, it's not surprising that for him live performance provides that additional frisson of excitement and uncertainty that you can't get with a recording.

To take up RFG's point, Pollini's Chopin may be the acme of piano playing, but we'll get the same performance every time we spin the disc! Live, who knows what may happen, as that recent trumpeter's tragedy of a Cardiff performance of the 4th Brandenburg illustrated!

On the flip side, the beauties of a recording which captures perfectly every note set down by the composer is able to provide unalloyed pleasure every time.

[Hornspieler]

Hornspiele


I think this is very unfair to both performers and the listeners who are unable to attend live concerts for various reasons or prefer to listen at home. I am one of them. Am I listening to something grossed-up with no genuine musical value? And as for performers, from many videos that are available on Presto Classical site, I have an impression that the performers are creating something different from the music performed live, and are committing it onto the recording.

Coincidentally, I posted this on the Early Music board about the Vivaldi concert broadcast on Sunday.

This was a thoroughly enjoyable concert. There’s something about Vivaldi performed live. It reminds me that his (instrumental) music was meant to be 'performed'.

http://www.for3.org/forums/showthread.php?15004-Il-Pomo-d-Oro-plays-Vivaldi-EML-10-April&p=552643#post552643

All the same, I treasure all those excellent Vivaldi recordings by many soloists and ensembles, and am never tired of listening to them.

Thank you for your remarks, with which I do not entirely disagree, but I think I must elaborate a little on what I wrote:

There is a marked difference between "...live from the Barbican" and "...recorded at a concert in the Barbican given by ..."

Yes. If you are fortunate enough to attend the performance, you hear it as it is happening - nothing added and nothing taken away. You can make your own judgenent, such as I thought the trombones were too loud or I couldnt hear the lower woodwind.

If you are listening to "... live from the Barbican, etc" you can hear the lower woodwind and the trombones do not sound too loud, because the BBC Audio Engineer has adjusted the balance of the microphones (as he is listening live) so that those listening at home get a more accurate rendition and "too loud" or "too quiet" does not spoil the Radio Listeners' enjoyment.

But the dreaded words " .. recording of a concert given at The Barbican on DDMMYY ..." is to be avoided if possible.

How many people have been interfering with that recording since the day - taking out wrong notes, loud sneezes, not to mention smatterings of applause between movements.

All cleaned up for the listener at home. But not as it was in the Concert Hall.

Here is an example of what can happen between the sound leaving the concert hall and reaching your ears:

I was tasked with producing a recording of a performance by the laughingly called Academy of the BBC* (in other words, "What's left of the BBC Training Orchestra") at a church somewhere North of Bristol.

The soloist was my old friend Alfredo Campoli, who was performing his favourite (and mine) Mendelssohn Violin Concerto.
It was a freezing cold day, but the church was warm. I have never heard so much coughing in my life from the audience, who apparently had no handkerchiefs to muffle their sneezing and barking.

There is a very important horn entry in the first movement - just a single note (what we used to call a "Poing") and our horn player succeeded in scattering it all over the church - ruining the soloists next entry.

Back in the editing suite in Bristol, it was my task to get rid of the atrocity, but we could not find that same note somewhere else in the recording to copy and overdub the dreadful mistake..

Then a solution came to me.

"Bill" (my recording engineer) "How many coughs do you think there are on that tape?"

"About four hundred I reckon"

"Right. Find me the loudest one you can. Copy it and dub it over the top of that horn entry."

The perfect solution! What's one extra cough in a recording containing over a hundred?
HS

* At that time, it looked as if the Beeb were comparing that group of failed students with The Academy of St Martin in the Fields!

Well, there are quite a few schools renamed Academies nowadays and the epithet, so inappropriate in the 1970s is more apt today.

[Nick Armstrong]

I posted a very long reply to Aeolium's OP and now it has somehow been deleted.

Can it be restored, please?

Help!

HS

Duly restored!


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And redeleted as ff got there first!

[kea]

It depends—most of my really important musical experiences have been at concerts. But I am often prevented from going to them due to a fairly bad social phobia, or simply do not have the mental energy to appreciate the music at the time. Recordings allow me to listen to music when my mental state is equal to it, and in an environment free of the stresses of e.g. being surrounded by people, having to dress up, etc., and to choose exactly what I want to listen to and for how long, and to listen to works that are rarely given in concert (and never in this country). Also it enables particular listening surroundings that are otherwise not easily achievable (e.g. there is nothing quite like listening to Beethoven's Op. 111 through headphones in total darkness).

Live music is much more physical which is another part of the reason I rarely appreciate it and often find it uncomfortable—it's exceedingly uncommon for me and my body not to be at war with one another.

I can't say which is better, but my instincts tell me live performance is extremely important, and I do wish I could appreciate it more than I do (and that I live in a place where I have the means, if not the income, to attend a good number of them).

[MrGongGong]

This might be informative

https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Musicking.html?id=1lOx9nr0aHkC

(Magritte is knocking on the window )

[Sir Velo]

(Magritte is knocking on the window )

Mmm...were CDs and downloads around in Magritte's day?

[oddoneout]

If you are fortunate enough to attend the performance, you hear it as it is happening - nothing added and nothing taken away. You can make your own judgenent, such as I thought the trombones were too loud or I couldnt hear the lower woodwind.

Is that always the case? Don't some venues 'improve' the balance of live performances? My late mother stopped attending one venue because they decided to make sure that those at the back could hear the bass line. A combination of acute hearing and excellent knowledge of the music meant that the concert was not a happy experience for her.
Which reminds me that a few years ago a summer choral concert at a revamped local venue was made difficult because the 'sound engineer'(actually the chap who turned the computer on, but didn't know how to alter it) hadn't understood that this 'concert' did not require amps..... During rehearsal it proved very hard to sing the unaccompanied items with large black boxes humming loudly in the wrong key each side of the stage. Fortunately it got sorted - mostly - for the actual concert, but the staff couldn't get their heads round the idea that not only did we want to be loud and soft, and with bass and treble 'unbalanced', but that actually the audience would be expecting to hear those differences. They got their own back by not adjusting the lighting properly so we were accasionally blinded when we tried to look at the conductor, and sometimes went funny colours.

[Dave2002]

Sometimes "tinkering" with a recording after a concert might be helpful. Many years ago I went to a performance of Oedipus Rex by Stravinsky. The narrator made quite a mess of things in the live performance, but it was being recorded for later transmission - probably in the days of tape. When it was broadcast I listened wondering what was going to happen in the recorded version, but there were no problems, the speaker was perfect. I mentioned this to one of the players in the orchestra, and she said that it had caused some problems, and that the speaker had spent a happy morning or so re-recording his lines.

If there had only been a minor fluff, that would perhaps have not been necessary, bur really it was somewhat embarrassing at the live concert. Whether or not the music was also "adjusted" I couldn't say, though I don't think it was.

[Bryn]

Sound reinforcement is quite often used in fragile acoustic environments. At to 'live recordings'. I recall Nigel Kennedy offered a few caustic words on the subject in his programme notes for his CD of the Beethoven Violin Concerto with Tennstedt.

As to 'live' versus 'based on live', I have a number of recordings of works by Morton Feldman in both their 'raw' 'live' state, and the tidied up edited versions using digital tricks and extracts from rehearsals in the same venue as the 'live' performance (the commercial releases). I find each version of musical value. There again, I am also aware that decisions as to what to patch were considered long and hard. In one instance a pretty perfect rehearsal take was rejected as failing to reflect the performers' exhaustion towards the close of a nigh on 5 hour performance. The less perfect 'live' version was preferred.