PS Leaving my own evaluation aside, one of the things
I have noticed about this type of recording is that there
is a direct connection between how much people like it
and how familiar they are with the actual sound of the
particular orchestra in the particular hall.
I did not have contact with the people in St Petersburg
after the fact --except for the musicians. But in Philadelphia I got a lot
of feedback from people who were going regularly to the Philadelphia
Orchestra concerts in the Academy of Music(where they were performing at
the time, Verizon not being in existence at that point).
People would call me up out of the blue and rave on about
how perfectly the sound of the Orchestra and the Academy was
captured on the recording, about how it sounded just like their
concert experience. And the members of the regular audience bought the
recording like crazy--we sold all 10,000 that we were allowed
to make under the contract we had, many , maybe most, to local people. The
musicians also carried
on about how they at last had a recording where they could
recognize their colleagues' playing, that did not make them
sound like a generic orchestra, without the real identity of their
sound preserved.
On the other hand, people who did not know what the orchestra
sounded like and did not care but wanted the recording
to sound the way commercial recordings are usually messed
with to sound were not impressed or interested so much.
There is a deep gulf between people who listen for what they
want (usually a kind of commercial artificial generic sound) and
what really happens in the actual event.
We were trying in all cases to get the latter. And I think
we did to the extent that that is possible.
I do not particularly like the Academy of Music acoustically.
Too dry for me. But I spent a lot of time there and learned
its sound well. Listen to the recording and there it is.
Love it or not, it is what was there, to a surprising extent.
In short, the recording of reality via Blumlein really works
if you do it well. Whether people want the reality is another
story. It seems that mostly the people that experience the
reality often enough to recognize it really want it.
Others just want something that sounds like everything else they
listen to. Or at least many of them do.
Not all however. Arnie Nudell, founder of Infinity, for example
called the WaterLily Mahler 5 "a benchmark for all future orchestral
recording". Depend on who you ask, I guess.
Robert
On Mon, 2 Apr 2012, Robert Greene wrote:
Sorry you don't like it. Apparently you do not like
the sound of the St Petersburg orchestra since of
course we did absolutely nothing to alter the balances.
Maybe you have never heard them, or maybe you are used
to hearing recordings that boost the violins up by
miking them separately(which lots of recordings do).
Brass instruments are way loud.
They do tend to drown out the violins in reality.
I should know: I am a violinist in a professional orchestra
and when the brass blasts away, yes, we violinists feel
drowned out and are.
Moreover, the trumpets in St Petersburg
sit out front. So they are close to the audience.
Meanwhile, this is seventh row. The trumpets are in fact
loud there. It is the style of the orchestra. Take it or leave
it--but it is surely not the fault of the recording.
But in the Adagietto , there are no such problems if problems
they seem to you. If you do not like that,,,well, breathes there
a man with soul so dead...
The balance was not
up to us. We just recorded what Temirkanv and his musicians produced.
That was the idea--the real sound, something that of course
is seldom found in recordings.
As to not liking the surround, I could hardly disagree more.
I think it sounds dandy and very realistic. One gets a lot of ambience and
cannot hear the rear channels as separate sources--which is a lot
more than one can say for most surround orchestral recordings.
To my ears, modesty aside, on an accurate system, the surround version
sounds more like a real orchestral concert than any other
recording I am aware of. I just love it, even if I do say so
myself.
But leaving the surround aside, the stereo balance is what was there.
How do you imagine we could have changed it since the stereo
is just the unaltered Blumlein feed? If you do not
like the balance, complain to Maestro Temirkanov. Not that
I suppose he will be very interested...
Robert
On Mon, 2 Apr 2012, David Pickett wrote:
At 12:42 02/04/2012, Robert Greene wrote:
Incidentally you do not need to build a concert
hall to record at one point. Try the WaterLily/St Petersburg/
Mahler 5 recording--pure Blumlein, sounds wonderful
(conflict of interest statement: I did the surround
sound part of this myself. But the stereo alone sounds
great--and one can definitely hear the violas).
Much as I am an adherent of pure Blumlein (and dislike the sound of ORTF),
and have made several CDs using a single figure of eight pair, I cannot
enjoy this recording. One can hear indeed the violas, but I can hear them
on most recordings: Mahler is a great orchestrator. But I hear on this
recording the timpani and brass frequently drowning out the violins. The
accompanying booklet ("A note on the recording") has three pages which
shed little light on how the recording was made and there is a long list of
playback equipment, which would seem irrelevant to the listener at home,
unless the implication is that I need identical gear to hear the recording
properly. If only two Pearl ELM 30 microphones were used, how were the
rear channels, which seem to me to add little to the experience, derived?
Should I in fact be listening to the 5.1 output of the SACD or the stereo
output?
David
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