Compulsive Viewing and the Need to Reply

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

However, the thing I HATE is concerts being chopped up before broadcasting.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

I agree with the selected comment, in case there is any ambiguity in my above reply.

[David-G]

What do you think? Is there any point in contradicting a contributor whose opinion is at variance with your own and upsetting someone who has stated their personal view?

If there is a discussion on a topic, of course there is a point in putting forward one's own point of view. However, if I am out of sympathy with the subject of a discussion, I would not interject a negative view which added nothing to the argument, simply for the sake of it. If for example there is a discussion about Mozart, and someone posts adding nothing to the discussion but simply saying "I don't know what you all see in Mozart", I would regard that as a very negative contribution, and indeed would tend to find it upsetting. Likewise if there is a discussion about Debussy, I would not post "I don't know what you all see in Debussy", even though I don't.

[jayne lee wilson]

Thank you for that observation. It enables me to clarify my statement with a hypothetical example:

A concert in an acceptable venue such as The Barbican given by a well-known Orchestra and Respected Conductor.

a) The patron in the auditorium hears the orchestra's interpretation of the conductor's direction and judges his reaction accordingly.
Let us suppose that he enjoys the performance, but would like to hear more from the woodwind but less from the brass section.
One of the horn players splits a high note in the first movement of the symphony

He might be bold enough to mention his considered opinion on this forum.

b) The concert is broadcast live

The audio engineer, sitting at his mixing desk with the programme's Producer sitting alongside might correct this imbalance by fading up the ww mike and reducing the mike in front of the brass - in real time, as it is happening

c) The concert is to be re-broadcast or available on the iPlayer.

Now, the Producer can get his audio man to get rid of that catastrophic split note in the symphony (By editing in a few bars from the repeated section of the symphony)

So which would you prefer?

a) The Patron's report on his reactions to the performance?
b) The Audio Engineer's adjustment to the balance of the performance?
c) Or the Producer's manipulation of what actually took place, in the interests of accuracy and to spare somebody's blushes?

I wish that I could be there at every concert, but those days have long passed.

OP

The choices offered under "which would you prefer?" aren't really choices at all, are they?
A verbal report on the event itself (a) is in a different category from two potential audio variants (b,c) on the broadcast event.
Nor can you choose, after the event has taken place, between (b - I take it you mean live adjustment) and (c).

When I write a review of a concert, I always say "as broadcast" about the music to make plain that this is different
from live attendance; and I note the technical details of how I listened (HDs, FM, DAB, inlayer, bitrates etc.). I hoped other listeners would do the latter but it didn't catch on - which is a shame, because it can have a huge effect on what you hear and your reaction to it (as we saw with the Rattle/Sibelius/Barbican series).

As for iPlayer, I frequently check my impressions of the live relay against it, especially if there are oddities of interpretation or balance, noises off etc. I've never yet heard any editing of the live event on these recordings - the details, balance & the overall impression are usually the same, albeit with some occasional slight loss of audio quality (immediacy, detail, dynamics etc.).

If offered a choice about an edited or unedited iPlayer version of the concert, I would always have a VERY committed preference to "as live and unedited"! In the old terminology a "deferred relay".
If I knew that split notes and other errors were to be edited out from a Radio 3 concert, I might as well stick to CDs or downloads - plenty of "live and edited" performances to choose from there...