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In Reply to: RE: Haydn: Complete Piano Sonatas (Naxos) posted by jazz1 on April 15, 2010 at 10:30:08
This one is spectacular.
Kal
Follow Ups:
A unique approach.
PAINTING: Dinner with Don GiovanniKal Rubinson,
The description of the recording technology which attempts to simulate the acoustic response of various keyboard performances venues is highly interesting. I lived in Los Angeles through the 14 difficult years it took to make the Disney Hall (I'm glad the sponsor was not Preparation H) and attended a lecture where Frank Gehry explained that he was a genius that wanted to reproduce the Concertgebouw in Amsteradam.
The Concertgebouw (Dutch for "Concert Building")is a 200-seat room with everything wrong about it- it's almost a double cube recipe for standing waves, plastered flat, hard plaster walls over masonry, there are windows, columns, and seating behind the orchestra. I believe I have a good aural memory and in my view, Disney Hall had none of the qualities the Concertgebouw, which is hard act to follow- it was built when the music being played in it was contemporary and so suits it perfectly. Disney Hall to me is full of standing wave/nulls, focusing certain instead of disapating reflection, a reverb that varies every 5' you move, and a general sense of sleepy inarticulateness. I'd rather sit behind a column in the Concertgebouw- (which I last did in 1989 Chailly with Zimmerman, Beethoven 5th "Emperor" Piano Conc.) than in the 11" wide seats in the side balconies of what I now call "Dismal Hall". And the seats at Dismal are stupidly expensive- I last paid $73 for torture chamber privileges (not too tortuous really- Uchida/Salonen, Mozart Piano Conc. 23). - -Anyway, the columns at the Concertgebouw are quite slim!
But, as skeptical as I became in acoustic modeling, I was an instant convert when I heard Ray Kimber's IsoMike system at the 2006 Los Angeles HE Show- I'd never experienced such realistically 3-D sound reproduction- I could place every instrument in every dimension -except of up and down- and including a visualisation of the overweight lady behind me rattling candy wrappers. Fantastic results and Mr Kimber's four closely spaced isolated mic technique is one the most elegantly simple and amazingly effective engineering solution I know.
My virtual world is growing as at the moment I'm actually experimenting Hauptwerk 3 software which uses acoustically recorded samples of every pipe of historic organs -and a screen of the original console- you pull the drawstops of the 1693 Schnittger in Germany with a mouse! When you press a key on your MIDI controller- the key goes down on the screen. One of the features of Hauptwerk is that you can buy some of the (Expensive- $200-$1,200) sample sets "wet" or "dry"- there's a room reverb or there isn't. I can only assume there were either omni-directionals for the wet versions or the room ambiance was multimiked- which I believe is more likely. Personally, I find I prefer the "dry" version and for perhaps an odd reason- when I play a tracker action (direct mechanical) pipe organ I'm sitting right under the pipes- the sound is very immediate and I don't hear the reverb. When I hear the organ sound and the reverb it sounds like a recording!
Here's some Bach on a Hauptwerk Schnittger sample set:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PQeOl8VKGvI
The description of the system used for the Haydn Sonatas looks very intriguing though until hear it I'm still a bit skeptical of the quantity and complexity of the processing involved- IsoMike I believe is effective because of it's brilliant simplicity- it's kind of "anti-processing" in fact. Plus I'm mindful of recent experience with Hauptwerk where I can compare exact version of the same sound with and without acoustic modeling, in which the less modeled sound is more articulate, transparent and ultimately more believable.
I'll be especially interested in the clavichord recordings in the Haydn set. I have and have tried to make clavichord recordings and except for a couple by Hogwood in which he's using a big, lush 1763 Hass- and there was an intelligent engineer, I'm never happy with clavichord records. There are some ProArte recordings with Clemencic and all I can hear- or rather what completely dominates my attention- is really key clatter with reverb. The clavichord seems to me one the very difficult instruments to record well.
I'm very pleased you brought this to our attention- it seems this realm of technology is going to become increasingly prominent and we listeners need to understand the alternative when buying.
Cheers,Bambi B
-My favourite musical meal- two channels plucked fresh off a Decca Tree
Edits: 04/15/10
It seems to work well enough to be convincing although, if you compare the main meal performances with some of the on site samples, there is a difference.
BTW, my name is spelled Rubinson.
Kal
PAINTING: Design for a Satie Museum
Kal Rubinson,
Yes, this looks like something to definitely give at a test drive. Actually, I've never tried an audio DVD in the ol' Cambridge Audio 640C, but as a recent convert to the idea that someday digital sound may be more than just practical and easy to manipulate, I'm interested in the recording method. - Even sound is trying to go as 3-D as possible.
From your description this technique was careful considered. Really clever stuff and refined- e.g., the artist wears headphones to provide a performer's feedback. It's very true that you play differently according to the acoustics- a very live room may inspire making certain notes a bit shorter or less powerful sforzando. This helps to complete the virtual venue concept. Hauptwerk tries for a refinement to the function as a virtual instrument. - Gosh! If we could have a virtual artist perform on a virtual instrument in a virtual venue we'd have something real !
> Can you say a bit something more about the quality of the performances? I'm also attracted by the idea that clavichord and harpsichord are included- there are some Sonatas that really do work on those instruments- especially when Haydn is in his semi-Scarlatti or demi-C.P.E. Bach modes. I'm perhaps in a small minority, but overall I prefer the rhythmic complexity and expressiveness of Haydn piano Sonatas to the more polite and stiff-backed Mozart. - Thanks!
Cheers,
Bambi B
The performances are generally vigorous but nuanced. They are definitely not "polite," even the early ones on the clavichord and harpsichord.
I should point out that these are BluRay discs, not DVD or DVD-Audio. You need a BluRay player for them. Also, I listened in only multichannel.
Kal
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