Prom 45: RPO/Dutoit (19.08.15)

[gedsmk]

I wonder whether the annual RPO / Charles Dutoit Prom has passed its sell-by date?

No, I think if they can continue to pull off spell-binders like the Respighi last year their Prom booking should continue. I for one (from what I read here) would be sorry to seem them go, esp. if replaced by yet another youth orchestra or Radio 2 fodder.

[Bryn]

Bryn - I've just listened back to the HDs 320 kbps version of this DSCH 15 as currently available on iPlayer. I was soon aware that this sounded very different from the live relay: the depth perspectives were back, the dynamic range natural and - as you measured - satisfyingly wide. The climaxes of the 1st, 3rd and final movements sounded very powerful, just as they should, and the final coda in proper dynamic proportion - restrained in its tensions, apart from that brief xylophone decrescendo just before the close. That 2nd movement trombone solo was no longer oppressively close; the winds were placed well back in the large acoustic, those 2nd allegretto shrieks piercing but spaciously resonant... and so on. Had it sounded this way live I would not have been darting about between JRMC, R3 Homepage and FM, or trying different dac filters, but settled back to enjoy the webcast.
Which sounds very enjoyable on iPlayer tonight, exploiting the large acoustic well. (And with enough interpretative interest to draw me back again soon...). So I can only conclude that there was some real-time level-adjustment applied to the live relay, thankfully absent from this recording.

(I've not heard this obvious a discrepancy before, though I have heard over-obvious level adjustments on other HDs live relays (which tend not to be the ones you seek out to listen again! So...).
When I made recordings of FM to metal or chrome cassettes through the 1990s I often heard differences between the live relay and a later repeat. And I became annoyed at those aforementioned compressive effects - to the extent that I gave up on Radio 3 concerts altogether after the 2005 Proms, only returning when the first 192kbps aac stream became available in 2009 - dynamics at last!)

Bryn - I don't expect you to trust my ears as much as I do, but in the absence of a time machine all I can say is: to these ears, through this system, that is how it sounded on Wednesday evening, and this is how it sounds tonight.

There was a longer than has become usual delay before the the 'Listen Again' files were posted that night. The screen grab I posted was based on the revised edits posted in the early hours, so I can well believe that they were not only topped and tailed but may have come from a source earlier in the audio engineering chain than the live HD Sound offering. I did not listen live that evening, and until last night had only listened to the currently available offering via a USB stick in the car on the way to work yesterday.

[wenotsoira]

Having given the poor man a chance and listened to his idea of the Shostakovich #15 ... well, even I'd expected better than this! Definitely one to (try to) forget.

Not enough vibrato then, Ferney?

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Dunno - I've forgotten!