Live music in concert halls. What's the point?

[Waxx]

Look around at the typical classical audience: they are on average several decades older than the musicians!

The hope is that they don't expire before the concert ends ...

That is not the case down here in Belgium. The average age may be a bit older than for pop concerts, but many youngsters are also into classical music (next to pop) and do visit concerts. The prices of good seats are often a problem for bigger more prestigious concerts, but when it's not, they are there. But with old and young, classical music is a niche market of the more intellectual people of all ages, not mainstream popular market.

 

[Sokel]

The prices of good seats are often a problem for bigger more prestigious concerts, but when it's not, they are there.

It's only sane that is no cheap if someone consider the cost of the (really nice) places,the limited audience,the large numbers of musicians and people who help and sometimes the huge fees of the diva's.

The age of the audience somehow follows a V shape the last 50 years,younger people attend more and more.
It's both cultural and as education levels grow the number of people who attend classical grows too.

Every real music lover knows that classical is the foundation,and the people they don't,also listen to it in other forms and they don't even know it (hint: some of the great soundtracks)

 

[Robin L]

It's only sane that is no cheap if someone consider the cost of the (really nice) places,the limited audience,the large numbers of musicians and people who help and sometimes the huge fees of the diva's.

The age of the audience somehow follows a V shape the last 50 years,younger people attend more and more.
It's both cultural and as education levels grow the number of people who attend classical grows too.

Every real music lover knows that classical is the foundation,and the people they don't,also listen to it in other forms and they don't even know it (hint: some of the great soundtracks)

Like every Real (True?) Scotsman?

I mean, Prince was truly well-rounded as a musician, but he didn't go to Julliard and it shows.

I'm glad to hear that the audiences for "classical" music are getting younger. I'm not intending to go back to listening to concerts, the reasons why have all been elucidated already. But I still listen to a lot of Baroque music via recordings.

There is a twinge of a desire to go back to recording concerts of small ensembles. Symphonic recordings have more variables, more things that might go sideways, so more like real work. But recording a Baroque trio with an ORTF pair of fine microphones is like setting up a fishing pole, sitting there waiting for the fish to come by. That sort of music in that kind of recording usually sounds better in someone's living room than from any seat in the concert venue. Can't get close enough in the performance venue to get proximity effect, so these sorts of recordings of Baroque music can sound eerily real in someone's home, with that "performers in the room" effect audiophiles crave. I used to do that sort of recording with a Walkman Pro on a parallel path while recording to one or two DATs, handing the cassette (usually TKD SA, no Dolby) to the performers. They probably played it back in their cars on the way home.

 

[Sokel]

Like every Real (True?) Scotsman?

I mean, Prince was truly well-rounded as a musician, but he didn't go to Julliard and it shows.

I'm glad to hear that the audiences for "classical" music are getting younger. I'm not intending to go back to listening to concerts, the reasons why have all been elucidated already. But I still listen to a lot of Baroque music via recordings.

There is a twinge of a desire to go back to recording concerts of small ensembles. Symphonic recordings have more variables, more things that might go sideways, so more like real work. But recording a Baroque trio with an ORTF pair of fine microphones is like setting up a fishing pole, sitting there waiting for the fish to come by. That sort of music in that kind of recording usually sounds better in someone's living room than from any seat in the concert venue. Can't get close enough in the performance venue to get proximity effect, so these sorts of recordings of Baroque music can sound eerily real in someone's home, with that "performers in the room" effect audiophiles crave. I used to do that sort of recording with a Walkman Pro on a parallel path while recording to one or two DATs, handing the cassette (usually TKD SA, no Dolby) to the performers. They probably played it back in their cars on the way home.

That's for you then,ambient sound as a bonus!

 

[Robin L]

That's for you then,ambient sound as a bonus!

Not exactly.
For one thing, I dislike needledrops of mono discs that don't sum to mono, so they have surface noise in stereo. That's just amateur.
The performance is quite dodgy. Sounds like the parts are doubled, so not so much a trio.

Here are some beautiful "noises off" as performed by the sorts of musicians I was lucky enough to digitally capture, a quarter of a century ago: Heinrich Ignaz Franz von Biber - Sonata violino solo Representativa. I didn't record this specific group, but this was the sort of music I frequently recorded. It musically depicts various forms of wildlife, birds and frogs and cats and so on. I like the frogs the best:
.:

 

[Sokel]

Not exactly.
For one thing, I dislike needledrops of mono discs that don't sum to mono, so they have surface noise in stereo. That's just amateur.
The performance is quite dodgy. Sounds like the parts are doubled, so not so much a trio.

Here are some beautiful "noises off" as performed by the sorts of musicians I was lucky enough to digitally capture, a quarter of a century ago: Heinrich Ignaz Franz von Biber - Sonata violino solo Representativa. I didn't record this specific group, but this was the sort of music I frequently recorded. It musically depicts various forms of wildlife, birds and frogs and cats and so on. I like the frogs the best:
.:

It was not about the sound,but you're right,we're in ASR.

 

[tmtomh]

I don't usually listen to classical music, and my live-music habits are the same, so when I attend concerts they are usually rock, or sometimes country/roots or blues, or singer-songwriter, that general area - so mostly fully amplified performance, and occasionally true acoustic.

As I've gotten older, I have gotten more discerning and I also have become more aware of how much damage the concerts of my youth probably did to my hearing, so I attend a lot fewer shows than I used to, and I always wear ear protection (which, sadly, reduces the enjoyment somewhat, but it's simply not worth it to me to damage my hearing further).

At this point I have sworn off any indoor amplified concert - they are too loud for me and they almost invariably sound atrocious: terrible acoustics, overloaded sound, just dreadful.

I do, however, still really enjoy amplified shows at outdoor or partially outdoor ampitheaters - if anyone here is on the East Coast of the U.S. you might be familiar with Merriweather Post Pavilion in the MD suburbs of Washington DC, or the Mann Center in Philadelphia, or the Susqueahanna Center in Camden NJ. With those venues you have a choice of covered seating or fully outdoor lawn seats, and either way there's no overpressurization of the space because of the open sides - which also create minimal reflections relative to a closed venue.

It's still 50-50 whether it will sound good or not, but at least there's a decent chance that it will be worth it for the impact of seeing and experiencing a live show in-person - I find there's an emotional and physical "goosebump" experience that can't be replicated any other way, just from being aware that one is in the presence of the actual performers in real time and space. This, BTW, is also why I am so unrelentingly critical in other threads here of the "live performance/true realism" standard for hi-fi sound reproduction: for me the quality of the sound itself is not what produces spooky realism. Rather, it's the awareness that I'm actually in the same space with the performers (and with other people), and no degree of playback quality can convince my body and emotions of that when I'm sitting in my listening room.

Finally, while a great outdoor/semi-outdoor concert is a memorable event for me that I think of fondly for years afterwards, for sheer emotional connection in the moment I agree with @SIY - nothing beats being in a more intimate, close-up situation with a small group, or just duo or solo, acoustic performers, being able to make eye contact while they're playing or between songs, not having them far away or up above you on a stage, etc, and hearing the direct sound from their voices and instruments unmediated by amplification and transducers. It's quite moving.