Sorry you don't like it. Apparently you do not like
the sound of the St Petersburg orchestra since of
course we did absolutely nothing to alter the balances.
Maybe you have never heard them, or maybe you are used
to hearing recordings that boost the violins up by
miking them separately(which lots of recordings do).
Brass instruments are way loud.
They do tend to drown out the violins in reality.
I should know: I am a violinist in a professional orchestra
and when the brass blasts away, yes, we violinists feel
drowned out and are.
Moreover, the trumpets in St Petersburg
sit out front. So they are close to the audience.
Meanwhile, this is seventh row. The trumpets are in fact
loud there. It is the style of the orchestra. Take it or leave
it--but it is surely not the fault of the recording.
But in the Adagietto , there are no such problems if problems
they seem to you. If you do not like that,,,well, breathes there
a man with soul so dead...
The balance was not
up to us. We just recorded what Temirkanv and his musicians produced.
That was the idea--the real sound, something that of course
is seldom found in recordings.
As to not liking the surround, I could hardly disagree more.
I think it sounds dandy and very realistic. One gets a lot of ambience and
cannot hear the rear channels as separate sources--which is a lot
more than one can say for most surround orchestral recordings.
To my ears, modesty aside, on an accurate system, the surround version
sounds more like a real orchestral concert than any other
recording I am aware of. I just love it, even if I do say so
myself.
But leaving the surround aside, the stereo balance is what was there.
How do you imagine we could have changed it since the stereo
is just the unaltered Blumlein feed? If you do not
like the balance, complain to Maestro Temirkanov. Not that
I suppose he will be very interested...
Robert
On Mon, 2 Apr 2012, David Pickett wrote:
At 12:42 02/04/2012, Robert Greene wrote:
Incidentally you do not need to build a concert
hall to record at one point. Try the WaterLily/St Petersburg/
Mahler 5 recording--pure Blumlein, sounds wonderful
(conflict of interest statement: I did the surround
sound part of this myself. But the stereo alone sounds
great--and one can definitely hear the violas).
Much as I am an adherent of pure Blumlein (and dislike the sound of ORTF),
and have made several CDs using a single figure of eight pair, I cannot enjoy
this recording. One can hear indeed the violas, but I can hear them on most
recordings: Mahler is a great orchestrator. But I hear on this recording the
timpani and brass frequently drowning out the violins. The accompanying
booklet ("A note on the recording") has three pages which shed little light
on how the recording was made and there is a long list of playback equipment,
which would seem irrelevant to the listener at home, unless the implication
is that I need identical gear to hear the recording properly. If only two
Pearl ELM 30 microphones were used, how were the rear channels, which seem to
me to add little to the experience, derived? Should I in fact be listening
to the 5.1 output of the SACD or the stereo output?
David
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