What recording can you always tell who is playing ?

[Barbirollians]

I will leave out singers - Baker , Ferrier, Pavarotti , Callas etc are always recognisable but I was just wondering about what instrumental or orchestral recording you can tell almost immediately who it is .

To name a few that are perhaps a bit predictable= these are mine - Du Pre/Barbirolli Elgar Cello Concerto , Bruno Walter's Mahler 1 , Bohm's Pastoral . And if you can is it just familiarity or just something so markedly individual .

[Pulcinella]

Glen Gould in Bach?

[teamsaint]

Glen Gould in Bach?

Michael Collins.

Just because it is always him.
Unless it is a woman of course…. in which case it would be Emms….

Same goes for Nicky D on the oboe….

[Retune]

I once correctly identified a performance of Verdi's Requiem on the radio as Gergiev's, knowing that he had recorded it but not knowing the recording; his style was that distinctive. I enjoyed several of his performances at the Proms back in the day, but my enthusiasm declined while his profile as Putin's court concert master grew.

[oddoneout]

Always used to be able to identify Andras Schiff's playing - for all the wrong reasons - but not so much the past few years.

[Petrushka]

Itzhak Perlman. The close recording is often a giveaway but still very distinctive.

The Dresden Staatskapelle still have a very distinctive sound as do the Vienna Philharmonic especially in older recordings where the slightly acid oboe tone is the giveaway. Listen to Furtwangler's recording of Mozart's Gran Partita to hear the VPO woodwind at its most individual. It's much the same with the Vienna Wind Soloists in Mozart's Serenade K275 recorded around 40 years later. It couldn't be anyone other than the VPO wind section.

Nowadays, though, the differences are far less obvious and even the VPO is losing its distinctive sound.

[Alison]

Switched on the car radio on Sunday morning and was sure I was listening to Scottish National Orchestra and Jarvi in Prokofiev, not a recording I own.

[RichardB]

Nowadays, though, the differences are far less obvious and even the VPO is losing its distinctive sound.

(but not because they've allowed women into the orchestra of course!) Yes, I was going to say that older recordings are far more distinctive, not just because orchestras had more individual sounds (like the Czech Philharmonic where the horns played with vibrato, as well as the Staatskapelle, VPO etc.) but also because recording techniques in the pre-digital era were more different from one another (partly different hardware, partly different approaches to recording), especially in orchestral recording. The distinctiveness of different ensembles is still quite pronounced in the HIPP zone, though even this is a bit more standardised than it used to be, and in ensembles specialising in contemporary music too.

I was going to mention the Portsmouth Sinfonia in this thread, but that's silly so I won't.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

The horn vibrato thing went far beyond the Czech Philharmonic, being widespread throughout the Soviet bloc, with the exception of East Germany.
The distinctiveness of the VPO was far more noticeable on Decca recordings than on those made by DG, which confirms what RichardB has said.

[RichardB]

The horn vibrato thing went far beyond the Czech Philharmonic, being widespread throughout the Soviet bloc, with the exception of Easy Germany.

I'm not really acquainted with recordings by other orchestras from those parts of the world, but this doesn't surprise me.

[smittims]

I think we need to distinguish particular recordings from any recording by that artist, especially one you haven't heard.

They are legion: Casals in Bach, Furtwangler in Beethoven, Cortot in Chopin, Beecham in almost anything. I remember hearing the opening of Debussy's Printemps about 40 years ago. I didn't know the work ; maybe I'd heard Ansermet conduct it once, and Debussy wasn't a frequent composer in Tommy's repertoire, but as soon as it began I said to myself 'That's Beecham'.

Where it's one particular recording, yes, it is likely to be familiarity. Sometimes the surrounding acoustic gives it away: I've got so used to the ambience of Studio 3 (Abbey Road) that can sometimes suggest the artist . But artists do have their ways of starting things, which convey their identity. In short, it's a big subject. You may have the basis for a PhD thesis here!

[Ein Heldenleben]

Interesting question this and it reveals some thing important. I’m pretty confident I could spot a recording by Horowitz ( loud left hand , feather light touch in upper treble, unusual voicings, Rachmaninov (very few recordings and no one sounds like him) , Schnabel (fast , dropped notes, quite incredible shaping of the music ) Cortot (phrasing ) Lipatti (ditto and virtuosity ) Richter (dodgy pianos , very fast , incredible technique )
BUT I would be hard pushed to spot Kovacevich from Pires from Uchida from Perahia (all wonderful legato / cantabile pianists rather than piano thumpers ) except in recordings I know well.
However I could tell the above (and Schiff ) from most of the current Russian school …
The point is that in the thirties pianists sounded different and now they sound much more the same .

[gradus]

Amongst pianists, Horowitz for the sound he made and Richter for the phenomenally powerful left hand. Amongst orchestras, the horns of the VPO and the strings of the Philadelphia.

[richardfinegold]

I agree that older recordings of both orchestras and soloists, primarily pianists, sound more distinctive. Claudio Arrau and Anne Fisher had very distinctive sonorities. The Philadelphia Orchestra under Stokie or Ormandy sounded very different in the pre Muti era. Golden Age Violinists were more individual sounding. Even the Auer pupils were very individualistic. No one would ever confuse Heifetz with Milstein, for example

[Nick Armstrong]

I think we need to distinguish particular recordings from any recording by that artist, especially one you haven't heard.

True - although both apply (sort of) to the one that springs to my mind: anything conducted by Carlos Kleiber. I know I could recognise his VPO Beethoven 5 or 7 due to long familiarity - but the other day, Martin H played Strauss’s Voices of Spring with no announcement beforehand: the impetus and swing made me think ‘this has to be Kleiber’… OK, I know he did those New Year’s Day concerts and I probably did hear bits of them at the time, but that’s what? 30+ years ago. His magic touch always shines through, to me.