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Bilson/Gardiner's Mozart's Piano Concertos and Recording Quality

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Pretorious

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I've listened to both the Bilson/Gardiner and the Brendel/Marriner recordings within the last week, although not on my "good" stereo at home. I was listening carefully (it was for a class I teach, so the students and I were specifically listening for differences), and noticed nothing I thought was "off" about the fortepiano. I will say that, while I am a fan of HIP in general and Gardiner in particular, many of his recordings (esp. on the Archiv label, it seems to me) do not sound good. Someone earlier mentioned the quality of Gardiner's recordings has been discussed elsewhere, and I would love to read that!

Very interesting. I won't dispute this, simply because I lack experience in judging how this particular fortepiano sounds in real life; and because these recordings bring so much joy to so many people. It may in fact be an accurate representation of how the piano sounded in that particular venue amongst that particular orchestra.

I can agree with the statement on Gardiner's recordings on Archiv in general. What an amazing musician hampered by lackluster fidelity! His recordings of Beethoven's symphonies and piano concertos are so 'thick' sounding, for lack of a better term, almost the antithesis of they being HIP performances. Levin's fortepianos in the concertos in particular seem to suffer the same fate as Bilson's, and Levin's are made I think a decade later. The sounds are consistently lacking in those aforementioned sparkling harmonics, or deep, rich tones that are so lovely on period pianos, markedly in the later concertos. This tells me that this can only be an engineering choice, and a rather poor one at that.
 

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This tells me that this can only be an engineering choice, and a rather poor one at that.
This tells me that JEG has final say on production decisions: the producer would ask the engineer for adjustments according to the music director's desires. Been there, done that.

This reminds me of some reviews of the sharp-etched sound of the original Epic Lp issues of George Szell/Cleveland Orchestra from the 1960's. Someone suggested that Szell monitored his recordings via a pair of Acoustic Research model 3 speakers under his couch.
 

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while I am a fan of HIP in general and Gardiner in particular, many of his recordings (esp. on the Archiv label, it seems to me) do not sound good.

The Bilson/Gardiner recordings date from the mid-1980, the early digital period. Archiv was (is?) a branch of DG, whose recordings to my ears tend towards the thin, hard, and congested. Finally, those performances were first released on LP, and IME, many such re-releases have been made with really ugly treble on the CDs. Some early digital work even lacked proper dithering, it's been reported.
 
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This tells me that JEG has final say on production decisions
This could very well be. I looked it up and the engineer is the same on both recordings. This could either mean that he knew what Gardiner wanted to hear and made the recording sound that way, or that what he (the engineer) thought sounded accurate was how he made it sound.
 

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This could very well be. I looked it up and the engineer is the same on both recordings. This could either mean that he knew what Gardiner wanted to hear and made the recording sound that way, or that what he (the engineer) thought sounded accurate was how he made it sound.
Speaking as an ex-recording engineer who recorded plenty of odd keyboards, the idea is to make the client happy. They want 'X'? Give them 'X'. The more complex the production, the more hands and ears are working over the recording. But the ultimate taskmaster is usually the performer. They can be audiophiles, audiophooles or not in the least bit concerned, as long as they're audible. The engineer can give input, but they're ultimately low men [usually, sometimes women] on the totem pole.
 
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Robin L

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This could very well be. I looked it up and the engineer is the same on both recordings. This could either mean that he knew what Gardiner wanted to hear and made the recording sound that way, or that what he (the engineer) thought sounded accurate was how he made it sound.
. . . or they're friends from way back and trust each other.
 

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Robin L

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Love this! And, by chance, I’m a subscriber to Amazon music HD, so this opened right up for me.
I get a similar sensation with a lot of the early digital recordings from Archiv. I suspect as most of the projects for Archiv were smaller scaled than projects for DGG, the Archiv recordings are more 'minimalist'. Some might find them threadbare, but these old recordings played back on good, modern gear sound timbrally accurate and very clear. I know from experience that the same music from a concert seat in an appropriately sized room will be more of a blur than the high-focus of an Archiv production. But, as other engineers recording the same stuff told me, if you can't make it sound better than the concert, then you're just not doing your job. The John Eliot Gardnier of "classical" music came afterwards. By the 1990's, DGG no longer had a "house sound", the nature of the production varied from performer to performer, sometimes great, sometimes not so. But DGG started having a bad rep with the Karajan recordings of the 1970s, when Karajan wanted to be the Rock Star of classical music, with matching production for his recordings. How can one forget the 1970's "Symphonie Fantastique", with an oboe panned hard left to hard right, like a guitar solo of Led Zeppelin?
 

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Gave the above-discussed Bilson/Gardiner set a listen today out of curiosity, both on headphones and speakers, on both Qobuz and Spotify. To me the piano is not forward enough in the recording and the deeper aspects of the tone of the piano are not faithfully enough recorded, and there is insufficient sense of decay of the notes, even given that it is apparently a period fortepiano, if I understand correctly. So these are not satisfying or truly enjoyable recordings for me, especially given that there are so many great recordings of the Mozart piano concertos. It was worth a listen though. The tympani sounds good with deep tones, as do the brass and woodwinds, so I am not sure why the sound quality of the piano seems to lag.

As a point of comparison and perhaps a good reference point, the BIS label Ronald Brautigam / Kolner Akademie / Micheal Alexander Willens Mozart complete piano concertos set, also on period instruments, is tremendously more to my taste. It sounds very lifelike to me, the recording quality is in a whole different league for my taste, and the performances are stunning, at least for me. That is what performances on a period fortepiano of Mozart piano concertos should sound like, IMHO. :)

View attachment 109352
Golly, it's got an upper tier stream at Amazon HD:

https://music.amazon.com/albums/B08L5TFY4V?trackAsin=B08L5QDDFP&ref=dm_sh_c02c-1476-d7e5-507d-9523f

Have to say I mostly agree with you. This is about as nice a fortepiano sound as one could hope for. I find the sound of Mozart on modern piano more complete, the octave to octave balance of the modern piano is more agreeable to these ears, sustain more to my liking. But everything you say about this recording is true. Archiv productions, as I have mentioned before, can sound comparatively threadbare.
 

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I'm copacetic with Pinnock's Bach Harpsichord Concerti, also on Archiv.
Yes, despite my earlier comments, this one I like -- and have done so for a long time.
 

Robin L

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Another early Archiv recording. This one focuses on the upper partials of the strings. If the gear is distorting, it sounds nasty. If not, you hear that interesting difference between modern violin sound and the sounds of strings in 'Early Music":

 
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This Pachelbel recording is excellent; the instruments sound lovely. All the Musica Antiqua Koln performances with Goebel are as near perfection as can be. They really personify that sound of period instruments, and the recordings bring that out so well; the strings always sound tremendously good.

As you mentioned, these Archiv recordings are accurate in timbre. My biggest complaint with them is the odd spatial/balance that I hear in them, that I don't hear in almost any other recording from any label. Take, for example, Haydn's violin concertos performed by Pinnock and his band:


The solo violin is once again hard panned to the left channel, making the whole recording sound claustrophobic. I have found no other period or modern instrument recording where they do this. This is a problem that is exacerbated when listening on headphones because it creates a strong occlusion effect.

What makes it worse is that almost all these Archiv recordings (not the Pachelbel one listed above, coincidentally) have no ambiance in the center channel position. The instruments (through reverb, echo, or otherwise) from the left and right channel never blend with the opposite channel. This creates a dead-space in the center that can be downright uncomfortable to listen to, especially with headphones. This can also be observed on the Haydn posted above. I have not heard this on other recordings, at least to this strong a degree.

On the following recording with Goebel in a Bach violin sonata the above two problems come out in a small chamber piece:


The violin and harpsichord are hard-panned to the left and right, respectively, and there's a dead-zone in the middle in which there is no sound, be it ambient or direct. It's just such an odd experience. I've compared to three other recordings from various labels (all period instruments) and the blending and balance is much more natural in them: there is no sense of a dead-zone, or hard balance of each instrument to each channel.

Again, to reiterate what I first said in my OP, this is a shame to me because Archiv/DG generally had some of the best artists and performances captured by their label. These listed in this thread are no exception. They deserved a better treatment.
 

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This Pachelbel recording is excellent; the instruments sound lovely. All the Musica Antiqua Koln performances with Goebel are as near perfection as can be. They really personify that sound of period instruments, and the recordings bring that out so well; the strings always sound tremendously good.

As you mentioned, these Archiv recordings are accurate in timbre. My biggest complaint with them is the odd spatial/balance that I hear in them, that I don't hear in almost any other recording from any label. Take, for example, Haydn's violin concertos performed by Pinnock and his band:


The solo violin is once again hard panned to the left channel, making the whole recording sound claustrophobic. I have found no other period or modern instrument recording where they do this. This is a problem that is exacerbated when listening on headphones because it creates a strong occlusion effect.

What makes it worse is that almost all these Archiv recordings (not the Pachelbel one listed above, coincidentally) have no ambiance in the center channel position. The instruments (through reverb, echo, or otherwise) from the left and right channel never blend with the opposite channel. This creates a dead-space in the center that can be downright uncomfortable to listen to, especially with headphones. This can also be observed on the Haydn posted above. I have not heard this on other recordings, at least to this strong a degree.

On the following recording with Goebel in a Bach violin sonata the above two problems come out in a small chamber piece:


The violin and harpsichord are hard-panned to the left and right, respectively, and there's a dead-zone in the middle in which there is no sound, be it ambient or direct. It's just such an odd experience. I've compared to three other recordings from various labels (all period instruments) and the blending and balance is much more natural in them: there is no sense of a dead-zone, or hard balance of each instrument to each channel.

Again, to reiterate what I first said in my OP, this is a shame to me because Archiv/DG generally had some of the best artists and performances captured by their label. These listed in this thread are no exception. They deserved a better treatment.
I'm getting a little "air" to the left of Simon Standage. But yes, this reminds me of early London/Decca stereo, a little too wide, too much ping-pong effect. If this was an Astree recording, the orchestra would be a little more centralized in the soundstage, more space around the performers.

I don't hear the "dead zone" in the Gobel performance of Bach. The performers are spaced a bit apart, but I'm hearing the room fill the space between the performers here. One of the things I like the best about the AKG K371 headphones is how they render reverb, room sounds and the like. They clearly fill in the space between the notes, capture the sound of the space is recorded in [or the density of the effects applied].
 

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I'm copacetic with Pinnock's Bach Harpsichord Concerti, also on Archiv. I'd share the YouTube, but it's a low rez transfer. Interesting, it's very early [1981] digital.

https://music.amazon.com/albums/B000VGAT1S?trackAsin=B000VGEHRA&ref=dm_sh_9002-5c48-f38a-f679-fa71a

This is absolutely awesome. Thanks. I get totally pulled into this. It's so just right I'd be speculating if I tried to say what was so just right about it. Like much good Baroque music (though I realize it is a pronounced understatement to call this "good"), it strikes me as though someone has taken a musical idea and put it through a kaleidoscope several times. Whether it's something as simple as the Prelude in C Major from the Well-Tempered Clavier or the Toccata and Fugue in D minor or something as advanced as these concertos. If I can get lost in it like that I call it a success. :)
 
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I'm getting a little "air" to the left of Simon Standage. But yes, this reminds me of early London/Decca stereo, a little too wide, too much ping-pong effect. If this was an Astree recording, the orchestra would be a little more centralized in the soundstage, more space around the performers.

I don't hear the "dead zone" in the Gobel performance of Bach. The performers are spaced a bit apart, but I'm hearing the room fill the space between the performers here. One of the things I like the best about the AKG K371 headphones is how they render reverb, room sounds and the like. They clearly fill in the space between the notes, capture the sound of the space is recorded in [or the density of the effects applied].
This struck me as a very interesting observation. So I pulled out my DT770s and had a listen, they being the closest thing I have to Harman sans EQ. There was definitely a noticeable difference along the lines you mentioned. I wonder if the enhanced sub-bass and nearby frequencies are adding the ambiance that I found missing when listening on my HD600? You may be on to something here, and I’ll do more listening tomorrow with fresh ears.

Of note, the recordings listed here have always been much more pleasant to me on my speakers than headphones. An observation I should have mentioned sooner.
 
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This is absolutely awesome. Thanks. I get totally pulled into this. It's so just right I'd be speculating if I tried to say what was so just right about it. Like much good Baroque music (though I realize it is a pronounced understatement to call this "good"), it strikes me as though someone has taken a musical idea and put it through a kaleidoscope several times. Whether it's something as simple as the Prelude in C Major from the Well-Tempered Clavier or the Toccata and Fugue in D minor or something as advanced as these concertos. If I can get lost in it like that I call it a success. :)
If you haven’t been down this rabbit hole yet you owe it to yourself to check out any and all of Pinnock’s recordings that you can get your hands on. His band and interpretations are stellar.
 

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This is as rich and fat sounding as any "early music" recording I've heard [so far]:

 

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I recall recording David Tayler [theorbo, far right] some 30 years ago. He's been involved with these Voices of Music videos for quite a while, some wonderful playing with wonderful engineering. This is new, very fine playing. Sound is very big, very full:

 

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Now, I am an enormous fan of period instrument and HIP performances, so it is not the sound of the fortepiano per se; it is simply the sound of the fortepiano on this specific recording.
I too am a fan of period instruments for the most part. But when it comes to fortepiano - I can’t seem to make the leap. I heard Frank Brueggen conduct the Orchestra of the Eighteenth Century. It was a while ago so I don’t remember the pianist. But one of Mozarts later piano concertos was on the bill. It was difficult for me to sit through it. I just can’t get past the clatter of the mechanisms and what seems to me to be the very limited articulation compared to modern pianos. I often wonder what Beethoven had in mind given that his piano pieces would be rendered on instruments such as these.
 

Robin L

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I too am a fan of period instruments for the most part. But when it comes to fortepiano - I can’t seem to make the leap. I heard Frank Brueggen conduct the Orchestra of the Eighteenth Century. It was a while ago so I don’t remember the pianist. But one of Mozarts later piano concertos was on the bill. It was difficult for me to sit through it. I just can’t get past the clatter of the mechanisms and what seems to me to be the very limited articulation compared to modern pianos. I often wonder what Beethoven had in mind given that his piano pieces would be rendered on instruments such as these.
My understanding was that the instrument makers would send him instruments, knowing that in the attempt to hear something, he would beat the hell out of the instruments. The piano makers could find out what parts of the instruments needed reinforcements in order to survive. Eventually this sort of thing would lead to metal harps instead of wood. You can hear Beethoven's piano works getting progressively harsher and louder as he comes 'round to his last works for piano:

 
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