Klarinet Archive - Posting 000208.txt from 1999/10

From: LeliaLoban@-----.com
Subj: [kl] Orchestral karaoke (was: [kl] Vienna Philharmonic at Carnegie Hall)
Date: Sat, 9 Oct 1999 03:54:31 -0400

Regarding the practice of recording the soloist and the orchestra separately,
Roger Shilcock writes,
>This procedure ssems almost normal for recordings of Sain-Saens 3.>

It may be common now, but IMHO it's wrong -- and when it must be done, I
think the engineers have no business monkeying with the apparent location of
the organ pipes (or any other instruments) so that they seem to hop around
the room! Save that for music that calls for it. I don't have any problem
with bass clarinetist and recording engineer Michael Lowenstern's heavy
engineering of "Spasm" (New World Records 80468-2), for instance, because all
the music on that CD is contemporary (Lowenstern based one of his own
compositions so loosely on Gershwin's "Summertime" that it's stretching
things to call it an arrangement -- it's more of a variation on a theme by
Gershwin) and scored for electronic manipulation in such a way that some of
it probably couldn't be performed live. Instruments seem to drift around the
room from that CD, too, but the effect seems appropriate in what the liner
notes call "post-modernist" music.

However, Saint-Saens wrote his Symphony No. 3 as a concert hall piece, in
1885, for an organ of the Cavaille-Coll type. Michael Murray's liner notes
of the Telarc recording justify the recording procedure by stressing the need
to find just the right type of organ, but organs with the appropriate
characteristics for this music, in halls suitable for orchestral recording,
are by no means as rare as he implies -- as he surely knows better than
anyone. Several of the best options are in London and he even mentions a few
of them! The truth is on p. 5 of the liner notes: "or for various reasons we
could not be at the right place at the right time." In other words, a
scheduling problem, not musical considerations, dictated the recording
procedure.

The notes raise another troubling question. Did Murray *ever* actually
perform the Saint-Saens 3 in concert with the Royal Philharmonic? Did Badea
*ever* conduct him in it? I searched the liner notes in vain for an answer.
According to Murray's biography in the back, he'd performed with the RPO at
that point, but there's no indication that he'd performed *the Saint-Saens 3*
with the RPO or that Badea conducted it if Murray did perform it there.

I read somewhere recently -- sorry I can't remember where -- that recording
soloist and orchestra separately is becoming increasingly common for
instrumental concertos. Is this the Brave New World of musical performance
standards, even for music written before the digital generation? What do
other people think of cutting and pasting together a virtual concert of
musicians who may never have met each other for all we know?

Michael Murray is a superb musician, IMHO. Some of his other recordings are
among my favorites. This one I can't stand. I've noticed, BTW, that Telarc
seems to be getting more traditional about microphone placement, because the
more recent recordings I've heard sound less peculiarly "creative" than some
of those from a decade ago. Maybe I'm not the only one who complained.

Lelia

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