Prom 44 (9.09.21) - Bach’s St Matthew Passion

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

19:00 Thursday 9 September 2021 ON TV
Royal Albert Hall

Johann Sebastian Bach: St Matthew Passion (sung in German)

Stuart Jackson Evangelist
Hugo Hymas tenor
Roderick Williams baritone
Arcangelo
Jonathan Cohen harpsichord/director

Louise Alder (soprano)
Iestyn Davies (counter-tenor)
Stuart Jackson (Evangelist)
Hugo Hymas (tenor)
Roderick Williams (baritone)
Matthew Rose (Christ)
Arcangelo Chorus
Arcangelo
Jonathan Cohen (harpsichord/director)

Bach’s crowning masterpiece, the St Matthew Passion combines moments of extraordinary fragility and tenderness with raw choral power and explosive jubilation, bitter grief with passages of consolation. With double chorus and orchestra, its scope and ambition is vast – a piece made for the Royal Albert Hall. Following on from their gripping account of Handel’s Theodora in 2018, period-instrument ensemble Arcangelo and Director Jonathan Cohen return to the Proms, joined by a glittering line-up of soloists including Roderick Williams and rising star Stuart Jackson. - Anonymous contribution from unknown source.

[jayne lee wilson]

Performers more than promising.... with epics like this all I can do is get things going, then see how I feel after Part One....hope the voices fall easily upon the ears...

Unable to eat today, not ideal for an epic. So perhaps it would be better to focus on Lent rather than Easter. Even unholy water can be very sustaining, you know...
Or I might succumb to Temptation and indulge in Apple Juice.

[jayne lee wilson]

Bilingual......

https://www.bach-cantatas.com/Texts/BWV244-Eng3.htm

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Not too keen on the sound balance, with soloists who sound 4 metres tall, alongside an orchestra of miniature instruments.

It can’t easy to recreate the concert hall sound tastefully, which why I nearly choked on the suggestion I quoted in the OP - that the work is ideally suited to the RAH.

[jonfan]

Agree. If any work is less suited to RAH than this is it! Weird sound balance trying to make sense of the small forces on stage. No more for me. I wish the performers well but this is a work I reserve for Passiontide listening.

[jayne lee wilson]

Unsure on what media others are listening, but on the live webstream there is good spaciousness and clarity in the recognisably familiar acoustic, vocal soloists placed just in front of the orchestras, with power, warmth and body when the choruses and orchestras play together. Good spatial and performer proportions generally.

I tend to use the most spacious DAC setting with vocal works, but while easier on these vocally-sensitive ears, the balance is good tonight anyway.

Only problem for me may be stamina....

[Beresford]

Unsure on what media others are listening, but on the live webstream there is good spaciousness and clarity in the recognisably familiar acoustic, vocal soloists placed just in front of the orchestra, with power, warmth and body when the chorus and orchestra play together. Good spatial and performer proportions generally.

I too noticed a more spacious sound balance on the webstream, after starting on Freeview with big soloists and a small orchestra sound.

The singers seems very good IMHO; the interpretation so far seems to lean to the Baroque Opera dramatic style, quite fast, rather than the dramatised cantata style that I know and love. Hang on - part 2 has just started, and my comment no longer seems true. Time for me to shut up and enjoy.

ps I have never heard of a dac with a "spaciousness" dial. Wow'

[Ein Heldenleben]

I am listening on FM a and it sounds fine .I can’t really hear the RAH acoustic at all. I think it’s very well sung…but then it’s a stellar lineup that’s ,if I may say so, a tribute to the depth of singing talent in this country .
.

[Nick Armstrong]

I am listening on FM a and it sounds fine .I can’t really hear the RAH acoustic at all. I think it’s very well sung…but then it’s a stellar lineup that’s ,if I may say so, a tribute to the depth of singing talent in this country .
.

Agreed. Just listened to part via DAB and the soundstage engineering seems exemplary - i.e. reduces the bathroom acoustic to a well-judged hint of bloom around the sound.

Based on experiences before, I would never go to hear a performance like this at that venue unless I could be sure of being a few metres from the performers.

[Keraulophone]

Agree. If any work is less suited to RAH than this is it!

The RAH was even less suited to this huge work at the Prom performance I attended by Joshua Rifkin (he of the ‘B minor Madrigal’) and one singer-per-part. It was like looking through the wrong end of a telescope. Even Yo-Yo Ma’s intimate (to 5000 listeners) late night Prom of the Bach ‘Cello suites sounded more beguiling in the commodious expanse of the hall.
.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Unsure on what media others are listening, but on the live webstream there is good spaciousness and clarity in the recognisably familiar acoustic, vocal soloists placed just in front of the orchestras, with power, warmth and body when the choruses and orchestras play together. Good spatial and performer proportions generally.

When you hear a work in a concert hall, the sound balance is the work of the conductor and the other musicians involved. With recorded or broadcast sound, you are subject to reprocessing of the conductor’s balance by the discretion of sound engineers. That is the problem here. The microphones have been placed to favour the solo singers, to the extent that they sound much larger than life. To hear balance like this in the concert hall, you would need to be almost treading on the soloists’ toes.

Of course, for people who listen to music exclusively through home systems, this unnatural sound seems perfectly normal, so the engineers have a thankless task. Should the sound be natural, as heard in the RAH, or should the engineers give home listeners what they think they want?

[Ein Heldenleben]

When you hear a work in a concert hall, the sound balance is the work of the conductor and the other musicians involved. With recorded or broadcast sound, you are subject to reprocessing of the conductor’s balance by the discretion of sound engineers. That is the problem here. The microphones have been placed to favour the solo singers, to the extent that they sound much larger than life. To hear balance like this in the concert hall, you would need to be almost treading on the soloists’ toes.

Of course, for people who listen to music exclusively through home systems, this unnatural sound seems perfectly normal, so the engineers have a thankless task. Should the sound be natural, as heard in the RAH, or should the engineers give home listeners what they think they want?

The problem with that argument is what is the ‘natural “ sound of the RAH ? The holy rail ? The middle of the arena ? . where I used to sit - one third of the way back on in the Stalls on the fiddle side. Every point in that hall has a subtly varying mix of direct and reflected sound, nodes and anti nodes . The sound balancer’s nightmare l I agree though it’s very closely miked with the singers very forward ..

[Nick Armstrong]

It was like looking through the wrong end of a telescope.

Precisely the feeling I had at a small-scale Handel oratorio (I think) years ago, ears straining from upstairs. All impact was lost. Hence my comment a few posts back - I’ll not be repeating that experience.

Agree with EA’s reaction to the fatuous BBC “made for the Albert Hall” blurb

[jayne lee wilson]

When you hear a work in a concert hall, the sound balance is the work of the conductor and the other musicians involved. With recorded or broadcast sound, you are subject to reprocessing of the conductor’s balance by the discretion of sound engineers. That is the problem here. The microphones have been placed to favour the solo singers, to the extent that they sound much larger than life. To hear balance like this in the concert hall, you would need to be almost treading on the soloists’ toes.

Of course, for people who listen to music exclusively through home systems, this unnatural sound seems perfectly normal, so the engineers have a thankless task. Should the sound be natural, as heard in the RAH, or should the engineers give home listeners what they think they want?

But systems and media vary too widely to so generalise, and via the AAC Webstream (most accurate of all such platforms) the sound balancing has, as usual, varied widely during the course of this wonderful Proms season according to the needs of the occasion, type and numbers of performers etc., and has generally been very natural.
A larger audience can dry the sound out, but that was handled very well tonight. Performers appeared here mid-hall or slightly closer, vocalists before the orchestras, choruses higher to the rear, neither too close or distant. Closer, say, than the Mozart Requiem a few weeks back which was far more recessed - but still natural and enjoyable.

As I've often said, I use the studio-monitoring type of equipment that is very accurate in revealing such things, night to night. Naturalness is the aim of such systems, and I would think the aim of the monitors used in the control room (Possibly later versions of BBC LS 3/5 5/8 etc, which my Harbeths are closely related to). If the voices had been too forward tonight (my biggest pet-hate of all sound-balancing characteristics) I would have heard that and described it so.
A vital feature of such speaker systems is an outstandingly broad, deep midrange, which is especially fine at revealing the spaciousness inherent in a given balance, so important (and pleasing) a part of classical reproduction. I guess you have to hear it to know...
Also, having adjustability (e.g. DAC filters) within the home system is very useful to check such balances, allowing some assessment of what is constant, and what maybe system dependent. I keep FM on hand too, but the optimod dynamic-range-compression almost always encourages a closer-sounding balance on soloists of any kind.

****
But after such wonderful singing and orchestral playing of great delicacy and refinement, I depart for my rest in a mood of calm, dark elation; a little tired but surprised and pleased I managed to make it through.....

Perhaps an enforced fast is apt preparation for a St. Matthew Passion after all....

[Ein Heldenleben]

But systems and media vary too widely to so generalise, and via the AAC Webstream the sound balancing has, as usual, varied widely during the course of this wonderful Proms season according to the needs of the occasion, type and numbers of performers etc., and has generally been very natural.
A larger audience can dry the sound out, but that was handled very well tonight. Performers appeared here mid-hall or slightly closer, vocalists before the orchestras, choruses higher to the rear, neither too close or distant. Closer, say, than the Mozart Requiem a few weeks back which was far more recessed - but still natural and enjoyable.

As I've often said, I use the studio-monitoring type of equipment that is very accurate in revealing such things, night to night. Naturalness is the aim of such systems, and I would think the aim of the monitors used in the control room (Possibly later versions of BBC LS 3/5 5/8 etc, which my Harbeths are closely related to). If the voices had been too forward tonight (my biggest pet-hate of all sound-balancing characteristics) I would have heard that and described it so.
A vital feature of such speaker systems is an outstandingly broad, deep midrange, which is especially fine at revealing the spaciousness inherent i na given balance, so important (and pleasing) a part of classical reproduction. I guess you have to hear it to know...
Also, having adjustability (e.g. DAC filters) within the home system is very useful to check such balances, allowing some assessment of what is constant, and what maybe system dependent. I keep FM on hand too, but the optimal dynamic-range-compression almost always encourages a closer-sounding balance on soloists of any kind.

****
But after such wonderful singing and orchestral playing of great delicacy and refinement, I depart for my rest in a mood of calm, dark elation, a little tired but surprised and pleased I managed to make it through.....

Perhaps an enforced fast is apt preparation for a St. Matthew Passion after all....

Big fan of Rogers 5/8’s . Never heard them bettered . There’s a company in Devon that used to make very similar speakers having bought the design . 40 years ago they would probably been used in balancing tonight’s Prom ….from distant memory they were powered by separate Quad 303 amps….