Carlos Kleiber and the Cult of the Recording
So I was thinking today, during a car ride in the family's minivan to Oakland and back, while listening to a CD of Carlos Kleiber conducting the Vienna Philharmonic playing Brahms' (pronounced Brahmziziz) 4th Symphony, about what Jack posted the other day about how Salonen's music is murky and muddled in performance, but sounds crystal clear on the recording. One would hope that the high quality of the recording comes from a well-rehearsed orchestra playing in a studio environment, and that the engineering assists only in having the microphones in the best of all possible locations, but, without having heard the piece either live or recorded, I immediately still worry about potential studio-magics.
There were always rumors (and I'm never really sure how substantiated any of them were) about various legendary recordings being spiked (or, you know, like, untrue, man). Of course, had we all read more Adorno, we would already know that the truth-value of any given recording is always-already in doubt (he would say "always-already" though, since that's Heideggerian jargon). Now, again, as always, I'll avoid actually talking about Adorno here (but did, of course, want to mention his influence (only fare)), but I do find it interesting about how recordings really do influence the contemporary experience of classical music (and have for a long time).
Incidentally, an interesting thing will happen in May when Jack & Nate go hear Dreamhouse played in Boston since we've all three of us listened to the only existing recording of the piece many many times (with I believe Nate coming out on top, in terms of sheer number of times through the piece), and they'll get to actually hear it live. I can't help but think. that at least for Nate (due to his excessive drive-time listening-to of that piece) there will be some amount of brain-dialogue between pre-knowledge of the piece-as-recorded and the live experience of piece-as-performed.
But I was thinking about engineering wizardry on classical albums, and of course with the Kleiber on the stereo (at a leg-rattlingly high volume) his recordings seem like a good example of what to talk about when talking about symphonic recordings. He didn't record much, at least relative to many of his contemporaries, but all the recordings of his that I have heard absolutely rip. They're really really good (and dammit, I'm losing steam here on this post), and in terms of tempi and proportion and all that they strike me as being spot-on. As for energy and charge and all that, both his recordings of Brahms 4 and Beethoven 5 &7 on Deutsche Grammophon are some of the most exciting recordings of anything that I've ever heard. I've seen some DVDs of him conducting as well, and his physical presence in front of the orchestra is mesmerizing as well.
The recording team for DG on for Beethoven 7 and Brahms 4 are the same. One can't help but wonder if they happened to really get something right on the technical end of the deal that make those recordings what they are, but I tend to lean (mostly based on the DVD footage of Kleiber) towards the fact that they were just excellent recordings of a group and conductor that both were at the tops of the games and positively feeding back on each other. The Kleiber Beethoven 7 recording, for me, has never been matched by a live performance (rated by goosebumps given). The Brahms, today, happened to remind me (beyond all of this garbage) of why I played French horn for so long.
But, yeah, did I have a thesis? Shit. Recording important, music good. San Dimas high school football rules!
There were always rumors (and I'm never really sure how substantiated any of them were) about various legendary recordings being spiked (or, you know, like, untrue, man). Of course, had we all read more Adorno, we would already know that the truth-value of any given recording is always-already in doubt (he would say "always-already" though, since that's Heideggerian jargon). Now, again, as always, I'll avoid actually talking about Adorno here (but did, of course, want to mention his influence (only fare)), but I do find it interesting about how recordings really do influence the contemporary experience of classical music (and have for a long time).
Incidentally, an interesting thing will happen in May when Jack & Nate go hear Dreamhouse played in Boston since we've all three of us listened to the only existing recording of the piece many many times (with I believe Nate coming out on top, in terms of sheer number of times through the piece), and they'll get to actually hear it live. I can't help but think. that at least for Nate (due to his excessive drive-time listening-to of that piece) there will be some amount of brain-dialogue between pre-knowledge of the piece-as-recorded and the live experience of piece-as-performed.
But I was thinking about engineering wizardry on classical albums, and of course with the Kleiber on the stereo (at a leg-rattlingly high volume) his recordings seem like a good example of what to talk about when talking about symphonic recordings. He didn't record much, at least relative to many of his contemporaries, but all the recordings of his that I have heard absolutely rip. They're really really good (and dammit, I'm losing steam here on this post), and in terms of tempi and proportion and all that they strike me as being spot-on. As for energy and charge and all that, both his recordings of Brahms 4 and Beethoven 5 &7 on Deutsche Grammophon are some of the most exciting recordings of anything that I've ever heard. I've seen some DVDs of him conducting as well, and his physical presence in front of the orchestra is mesmerizing as well.
The recording team for DG on for Beethoven 7 and Brahms 4 are the same. One can't help but wonder if they happened to really get something right on the technical end of the deal that make those recordings what they are, but I tend to lean (mostly based on the DVD footage of Kleiber) towards the fact that they were just excellent recordings of a group and conductor that both were at the tops of the games and positively feeding back on each other. The Kleiber Beethoven 7 recording, for me, has never been matched by a live performance (rated by goosebumps given). The Brahms, today, happened to remind me (beyond all of this garbage) of why I played French horn for so long.
But, yeah, did I have a thesis? Shit. Recording important, music good. San Dimas high school football rules!
2 Comments:
I'm not sure what you mean by a recording being "spiked" -- once you're putting something down in a bunch of takes, what else counts as cheating?
What I was thinking about with the Salonen is more the effect of hearing, say, a complex chord in the strings (which Salonen uses a lot; whole bunch of different pitches being played) in the concert hall and getting a fairly blunt, hazy sound, versus hearing it beamed out of a couple of speakers and getting a more penetrating, focused sound.
I think recording engineer balance-level gaming is part of this, but it seems to be an elemental difference in the kind of sound you're getting. And it seems to be very, very noticeable for these modern works that use thick textures and complex harmonies.
Examples of spiked recordings, would be say: Szell's recordings of the Schumann symphonies with Cleveland that use his thinned-out orchestrations. Recordings of works with sections of instruments doubled (like, say, Beethoven 7 with two horns on each part instead of one).
Or a recording where movements themselves are recorded piece-meal. Although that gets too hairy too quick - whose to say what the fundamental unit of a symphony is.
Post a Comment
<< Home