I also didn't like the sound at first hearing. I couldn't get past the
"reverb". However, since then I have grown to love this recording. Now I
can't get past the astonishing artistry.
On a related note, early in the current release The American our hero goes
to a small village in Italy. He pauses at an intersection which has a sign
l'Aquila 30 km. So if you want to get a feel for that area and the local
towns and buildings, you might want to see it.
----- Original Message -----
From: "howard posner" <[email protected]>
To: "LuteNet list" <[email protected]>
Sent: Tuesday, September 07, 2010 1:43 PM
Subject: [LUTE] Re: Marco dall'Aquila / O'Dette
On Sep 7, 2010, at 12:59 PM, Narada wrote:
I recently purchased this CD.
..but didn't read Paul's insert notes?
The sound quality is awful, it is completely
washed out with 'Hall Reverb' The individual notes can hardly be
seperated
in some of the faster passages. This recording needs remastering and the
level of reverb reduced massively. If anything the reverb should only add
a
little 'wetness' to the sound, not drowned it.
You seem to think reverb was added. It wasn't. The CD was recorded in a
room in a castle in Capestrano, near Aquila (a last-minute arrangement
because the intended venue in Aquila had been damaged in an earthquake),
and the sound is very likely what you would have heard 15 feet from the
lute (or what one of Marco's contemporaries would have heard him playing
from down the banquet table).
This is an effect I've experienced in larger resonant rooms as well,
particularly with lower frequencies: the cello's 16th-notes in a Vivaldi
concerto are perfectly distinct close up, but from ten steps back they're
a vague shimmering wash. You can choose to regard this as a problem, or
you can conclude (as Nicolaus Harnoncourt has in a published essay) that
Vivaldi intended the shimmering effect, or at least expected it and didn't
mind it.
Since I'm writing a review of the recording for LSA Quarterly even as we
speak, I've listened to it enough to get over the strangeness of the
sound, and find that I rather like it, and have no trouble making out the
lines.
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