Great recordings, ODD background noises

[Ferretfancy]

To quote a couple of masters " Stil, I never did care for music much, it's the Hi-Fidelity! "

[pmartel]

Not a recording, but a live performance of Mahler's 9th Symphony with the NYPO recently where some idiot's cell phone went off in a sublime part of the last movement.

Made it to NPR news.

I DOUBT very much that part will be released for broadcast, but I'm watching the NY Phil website as concerts are available online.

[Serial_Apologist]

Not a recording, but a live performance of Mahler's 9th Symphony with the NYPO recently where some idiot's cell phone went off in a sublime part of the last movement.

Made it to NPR news.

I DOUBT very much that part will be released for broadcast, but I'm watching the NY Phil website as concerts are available online.

You may have noticed now that there's a separate thread on this topic, pmartel

S-A

PS - Good to have you back!

[pmartel]

Thanks S A.

It's fun being back, lot's of things have changed since my first postings on the old forums

[Gordon]

KH was notorious for the Piccadilly tube trains and the recordings on which they are heard are legion, not to mention building works noise. The building work noise led to litigation by Decca on one occasion. The deep bass was filtered out during LP cutting for LP because of of its effect on groove depth. Whether that practice was also continued into CD I don't know because it does no technical harm.

There was more interesting extraneous noise the time when Joan Sutherland was recording the Mad Scene for her famous ‘Lucia’. Kingsway, being a Methodist Mission, provided shelter and treatment for down-and-outs and alcoholics. At the end of the first take of the Mad Scene there was some rather inebriated applause and shouts of ‘encore’ from a couple of drunks who had found their way into the hall and were transfixed by what they heard. Joan was quite unfazed by this and went on to do a second take, in the presence of her audience, which is the one that went into the master. She said afterwards that they had given her inspiration!! There are other accounts of vagrants finding their way into the Hall.

The one recording I use as a good example of KH tube noise is Lark Ascending with the ASMF/Iona Brown recording from May 14th 1971. The very end is so quiet that for about 50 seconds you can hear a train arrive and slow for the Holborn stop!! Barbirolli's Elgar from May 1962 [English String Music] is also a good example - the famed VW Fantasia on that disc was recorded at the Temple Church because of the tube noise at KH. You do need decent speakers to hear these rumblings in their full glory, the better the speakers' low frequency response the worse the effect!

By the way, KH will be 100 years old next December 6th, or would have been had it not been demolished in 1997 to make for the present KH Hotel but the mission survives. I hope someone will record the centenary somehow, they have plenty of time to do the research eg at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingsway_Hall for the history and and in Philip Stuart's several discographies for the music. A CD review or even a full R3 special feature??

[cloughie]

When recordings were made at the Kingsway Hall in London it was quite common to hear Subway/Tube trains in the background I believe, although I've never heard such a recording myself.

I seem to remember comments on this regarding the Ansermet Firebird - I see this with the rehearsals have been reissued on Australian Eloquence.

There are a number of pop recordings made in the Caribbean with what sound like Crickets (the insects not the willow) in the background.

[Ferretfancy]

I only visited Kingsway Hall once, in about 1959, when the BBC used it for a recording of a concert conducted by Carmen Dragon. They were attempting to re-create the sound of his recordings with the Hollywood Bowl Symphony Orchestra, using lots of microphones, which was nor common practice at the time. The results were not very good!
I remember that even then the building was in a poorly maintained state, rather like the Camden Theatre, another venue used by the Beeb.

All those wonderful recordings from EMI and Decca made at Kingsway came to an end because the two companies were offered the chance to buy the hall, but could not agree on the funding

I saw a news item recently that there are plans to rebuild the Sofiensaal in Vienna, as an arts venue, but also with a block of flats, so there seems no possibility of it ever finding its original glory.