Recording gaffs

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

This is not about recorded performances - more about disasters brought about by the recording producers/engineers/editors who really should have known better.

Decca's recording reputation had never been higher when they recorded Britten's Golden Vanity, yet the overmodulation of the boys' voices I atogether dreadful in places.

Decca again - this time the Phase Four recording of HMS Pinafore, where the voices sound as though they are in a different dimension from the orchestra. (I can cope with the seagulls.)

Karajan's Turondot, where the VPO and the voices seem to be out of phases and sync throughout.

But winner must surely be Konwitschny CD of Strauss's Alpine Symphony. The transfer engineer must have been in a dream. The music, having reached the "summit" climax, is then unbelievably lap-dissolved to 2 minutes earlier, so we have an unscripted repeat. I thought my CD was faulty at first, but the minutes & seconds counter indicated otherwise.

[Petrushka]

John Culshaw did rather regret having the sound of the ring being thrown on to the heap of gold that hides Freia in Das Rheingold as well as the noise of gold itself being piled up. He was right to regret them as they both come across as deeply risible.

[Ferretfancy]

Eine Alpensinfonie

It's a long time since I listened to The Golden Vanity, but I like your comment on HMS Pinafore. Phase Four recordings were actually made by engineers from Decca's Pop division, and Jimmy Locke said that if the classical engineers used the studio after them they had to spend an hour cleaning the coffee and cigarette ash out of the faders !
The earlier D'Oyley Carte version of Pinafore on Decca is a splendid piece of stereo, especially the marching feet etc. and it's a nice reminder of John Reed.

[pastoralguy]

There's an odd recording of 'Le Sacre' as part of the Svetlanov edition ( no. 16) on Erato where the second part has two sections back to front! Just carelessness.

[pastoralguy]

This is not about recorded performances - more about disasters brought about by the recording producers/engineers/editors who really should have known

There are moments in some of Karajan's recordings where I feel the producer should have insisted on re-takes. Three I can think of from memory are...

An EMI Tchaikovsky 4 where Karajan wouldn't give the engineers time to set up the microphones resulting in the first fiddles being almost in audible in the first movement.

Bruckner six (on DG) where a nasty page turn results in only the leader coming in and the rest joining in a bit sheepishly a bar or two later.

A DG recording of the Dvorak string serenade where a fiddle makes a real howler. I refuse to believe that a good producer wouldn't have noticed it and should have demanded a re-take. (Or was karajan just too powerful for anyone to stand up to him?)

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

The earlier D'Oyley Carte version of Pinafore on Decca is a splendid piece of stereo, especially the marching feet etc. and it's a nice reminder of John Reed.

John Reed is also on the Phase Four recording, which also has the wonderful Valerie Masterson as Josephine. Otherwise, as you say, the 1960 recording is superior in every respect.

[LeMartinPecheur]

There's an absolutely horrendous tape splice in an Aussie recording of Percy Grainger's The Lonely Desert Man sees the Tents of the Happy Tribe (sic!) by the Sydney SO under John Hopkins. The last few vocal bars seem to have been recorded by different artists in a different acoustic, and probably by different engineers using different mikes, mixers and tape-stock.

Apart from that it's absolutely fine

(Actually, it's such a weird piece that I think it just possible that the last few bars were recorded completely separately!)

[Barbirollians]

I always wondered whether my copy was faulty but Rattle's CBSO Enigma always sounded as if it was recorded through muffled microphones .

Kovacevich's EMI Beethoven sonata cycle was so dryly recorded some had to be re-recorded as I recall .

[umslopogaas]

The Culshaw/Solti 'Ring' again ... Its a long time since I listened to the end, but as I recall, the fall of Valhalla sounds not so much like a mighty castle falling in ruin as a small builder's truck dumping a load of breeze blocks. And I agree about the stacking of the gold in Das Rheingold: distinctly tinny (according to the accompanying leaflet, no Viennese bank would loan gold bars, so they actually did use tin blocks, under armed guard).

[Pabmusic]

There was a quite famous Studio Two record of the Light Music Society Orchestra, conducted by Sir Vivian Dunn, of music by Percy Grainger. Lovely performances of the 'best of' - Country Gardens, Shepherd's Hey, etc. The take of Shepherd's hey that was chosen had the xylophonist playing four bars early for most of the piece. I don't know how many people noticed - not the EMI crew at any event - but I did, from the moment I first heard it.

It's on here: http://www.amazon.co.uk/British-Ligh...ght+music+dunn

[Gordon]

Barbirolli's 1969 Mahler 5 with New Philharmonia in Watford and issued on LP in 1970 without several bars of horn solo!!! They were replaced for the CD issue by getting Nicholas Busch the original horn player back to Watford [I think during another session] to do the missing bars.

http://www.gramophone.co.uk/HallofFame/Barbirolli/Review/Mahler

[gradus]

Menuhin/RPO Enigma where Nimrod has an extraordinary rise in the recording level for the final statement of the theme, oddly affecting though.

[Roehre]

In Robert Craft's CBS complete recording of Webern's work with an opus number (february 1954-May 1956) there are a couple of nice and not-edited-out mistakes. Especially in the 3 songs opus 18 there are a couple of notes in the wrong octave (guitar, clarinet) e.g.

[Sir Velo]

When I saw the title I thought we were going to have a thread devoted to items of fishing paraphernalia, or flats and bedsits used in recording. Bit of a gaffe.

[Tapiola]

flats and bedsits used in recording

Something like this...?