BaL 22.12.18 - Vivaldi: Gloria RV589

[vinteuil]

Well, for me, it was NOT the 'accent ' -stilted or otherwise - but the sheer vertiginous speed / whole sentences of gabbles with which she delivered much good info. Knew her stuff, yes, but at the end, did we?

... well, if we listened attentively, yes we did!

I was conscious that at times she spoke a little more swiftly than was quite comfortable - but it was all quite clear, really.

.

[Bryn]

O.k., so I had to Google SPAV. Come to think of it, I may well have the BBC FOUR broadcast on DVD-R, but both sound and picture will hopefully be better on the official DVD. What a crazy discrepancy between the spav.co.uk and Amazon/ebay prices. That's if the DVD does actually arrive.

The DVD was delivered today. The picture is fair enough but the editing and the audio quality on the commercial DVD are well below the standard one might hope for. SPAV clearly did not think the performance or recording good enough to present them in LPCM stereo. All you get is 2 channel lossy Dolby Digital, and that so poorly executed that there are horribly off-putting dropouts between some sections of the Gloria, with 'holes' in the closing chords. This is a very poor job. I recommend keeping well clear of it. I plan to extract the audio and edit out the dropout before saving as a separate audio file. I will be writing to SPAV to decry this shoddy product. How come the crass editing was not mentioned during the BaL review?

[I have received a swift response from Richard Vendome of SPAV. He relates the difficulties they encountered in producing the DVD. Though this does not diminish my criticism of the resulting product, I can but sympathise with the problems they encountered. I will therefore not be availing myself of his offer of a refund.]

[Darloboy]

Ensemble Caprice, Mathias Maute.

And Taverner Choir & Players, Andrew Parrott