In fact if you go to 'Friends of Oakwell Hall ' there are some very good
photo's, including one that has a Lute in it.

Have a look.

Neil

-----Original Message-----
From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf
Of howard posner
Sent: 07 September 2010 21:44
To: LuteNet list
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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