Audible Prompters on Opera Recordings

[Conchis]

Recordings made in Bayreuth are full of these 'interventions' - the Bohm Ring is rife with it, so is the Boulez Parsifal; also the Karajan Tristan which I'm listening to at the moment (the prompter almost as busy as Ramon Vinay is!)

Any other examples you know of?

[Richard Barrett]

Any other examples you know of?

The first (Ozawa) recording of Messiaen's St François d'Assise is basically unlistenable for this reason (despite somehow meeting with the composer's approval).

[Conchis]

The first (Ozawa) recording of Messiaen's St François d'Assise is basically unlistenable for this reason (despite somehow meeting with the composer's approval).

Some ears are more sensitive than others. In the sixties and seventies, Gramophone critics would review recordings with the bass on their systems retarded and the treble pumped up. Maybe Messiaen was so absorbed in listening to the notes, he didn't hear the prompter?

[jayne lee wilson]

Some ears are more sensitive than others. In the sixties and seventies, Gramophone critics would review recordings with the bass on their systems retarded and the treble pumped up. Maybe Messiaen was so absorbed in listening to the notes, he didn't hear the prompter?

Gramophone critics would what?! Could you give us chapter and verse on that please?
Where d'you hear about it?

[Conchis]

Gramophone critics would what?! Could you give us chapter and verse on that please?
Where d'you hear about it?

In John Culshaw's Ring Resounding book, there is an anecdote about a critic who criticised the Solti-Decca recording of Tristan Und Isolde because it was 'deficient in the bass frequencies' and therefore 'failed to realise Wagner's intentions'. Culshaw took great umbrage at the review and sent an engineer round to inspect the critic's system, whereupon the engineer discovered the state of affairs alluded to above.

Singers made the same mistakes: Culshaw relates receiving a furious letter from Birgit Nilsson after the Solti Gotterdammerung had been released, complaining of how the engineers had made her sound 'like a weak Pamina'. it turned out she'd been listening on a cheap portable dansette!

[Richard Tarleton]

In John Culshaw's Ring Resounding book, there is an anecdote about a critic who criticised the Solti-Decca recording of Tristan Und Isolde because it was 'deficient in the bass frequencies' and therefore 'failed to realise Wagner's intentions'. Culshaw took great umbrage at the review and sent an engineer round to inspect the critic's system, whereupon the engineer discovered the state of affairs alluded to above.

pp 210-11. First of all, Culshaw invited the critic to bring his review copies to a neutral venue, "...the Rimington van Wyck shop in Cranbourne Street, where the late Fred Smith was in charge. I knew that Fred stocked first-class equipment on which a major critic should be reviewing a major recording. The critic was astonished by what he heard...." It was then that JC and co sent the engineer round, "and found not only a serious deficiency on the bass side, but that he was reviewing all his records with the bass control fully retarded, and the top control fully advanced. Yet he had blamed the record, and had never given a thought to his machine".

Like the tenor in Siegfried, the critic is not identified....

[pastoralguy]

I've said this before, but the Gramophone used to do a 'Hi-Fi Doctor' feature where a team from the audio section would visit a reader and make suggestions about how they could improve their listening experience within a given budget. I remember that a Gramophone critic was a recipient of this advice and I was amazed that his equipment wasn't nearly as good as mine! (*)

Something to consider when reading a critic's review of sound quality!

* October 2004. Page 104.

[makropulos]

I've said this before, but the Gramophone used to do a 'Hi-Fi Doctor' feature where a team from the audio section would visit a reader and make suggestions about how they could improve their listening experience within a given budget. I remember that a Gramophone critic was a recipient of this advice and I was amazed that his equipment wasn't nearly as good as mine! (*)

Something to consider when reading a critic's review of sound quality!

* October 2004. Page 104.

Yes and no. There's an argument for saying that a reviewer commenting on how wonderful a recording sounds on their £3000 speakers or what have you is not a lot of use to people (most of us, I imagine, and certainly me) who can't run that kind of kit. If a recording sounds fantastic on a reasonably priced system that, in my view, is probably more useful advice for most readers.

[jayne lee wilson]

In John Culshaw's Ring Resounding book, there is an anecdote about a critic who criticised the Solti-Decca recording of Tristan Und Isolde because it was 'deficient in the bass frequencies' and therefore 'failed to realise Wagner's intentions'. Culshaw took great umbrage at the review and sent an engineer round to inspect the critic's system, whereupon the engineer discovered the state of affairs alluded to above.

Singers made the same mistakes: Culshaw relates receiving a furious letter from Birgit Nilsson after the Solti Gotterdammerung had been released, complaining of how the engineers had made her sound 'like a weak Pamina'. it turned out she'd been listening on a cheap portable dansette!

Problem here is precisely that - "there is an anecdote". All you are doing is generalising from a few small particulars. Similarly with RT's "the critic is not identified".

So here's the system used for "Sounds in Retrospect", 9/75, a session attended by among others John Borwick, Lionel Salter, Robert Layton and Edward Greenfield:

Shure V15/III
SME 3009/II
Garrard 301
Quad 33/303
Quad ESL

The SIR piece, as usual, goes into extremely precise detail about the virtues and deficiencies of tonal balance, sound staging, dynamics and all the features appertaining to sound quality in each recording. The equipment (typical of many such features) was chosen for its clarity and neutrality - its ability to reveal a given recording as accurately as possible. Do you truly believe that these very experienced and savvy listeners would have listened to and assessed the recordings after first "retarding the bass and pumping up the treble"?

Look at any Sounds in Retrospect from the 60s to the 80s - you'll find very high quality systems, chosen for such neutrality and accuracy, listened to by a very experienced panel of reviewers and producers to assess its qualities as carefully as they could.
By 2004 and the "HiFi Doctor" features PG refers to, such an approach was almost forgotten...but that was the whole point of Sounds in Retrospect, to give you an accurate account of a recording through some of the best systems (and most experienced ears) available at the time.

[jayne lee wilson]

Yes and no. There's an argument for saying that a reviewer commenting on how wonderful a recording sounds on their £3000 speakers or what have you is not a lot of use to people (most of us, I imagine, and certainly me) who can't run that kind of kit. If a recording sounds fantastic on a reasonably priced system that, in my view, is probably more useful advice for most readers.

It isn't really (or not just) about the price, much more about the accuracy and precision with which a system reveals the true qualities of a given recording. Of course there are many very expensive components that don't try to do this - designedly rich and warm, or with a very fast, leading edge attack with rhythmical character emphasised (***). But the BBC Speaker research of the 60s and 70s developed monitoring components precisely to give a clear view of the recording itself, for obvious reasons. This tradition was preceded by and fed into the HiFi designs from such as Quad, Spendor, ATC, Harbeth and so on.
These systems are not cheap, but the R&D budget went on their accuracy. The relevance to cheaper, even much cheaper components and systems is simply that any reviews based on listening to such equipment are more likely to be truthful. A better guide to the characteristics of the recordings you buy, and so to the tonal balance and general accuracy of the system you run yourself. I had very modest systems in those years when I first read SIR (or its successor, Soundings) but I found comparing their impressions with my own an invaluable education. I knew that I could trust them - and that was borne out when I could afford a better system myself - which surprise, surprise, is based on ATC Amps and Harbeth Speakers....

(***) I suspect this is less and less the case today, as HiFi Systems have to deal with so many sources (Files, discs, streams etc, lossy and lossless..). To be successful they have to be fairly evenhanded i.e. neutral in their sound balance, as many recent reviews seem to suggest... The problem with designing-in a distinctive sound is that it will discriminate against particular balances or even specific types of music. And with many digital components now you get a choice of filters to tailor the sound to system or personal requirements - experimenting with those is another sonic education - varying perspective on the same recording.