Fitzcaraldo215
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Most interesting, and thanks for your insights.I've just this weekend rather cursorily watched "Karajan: The Second Life". I know he is a divisive figure nowadays but it's difficult to deny his status as a recording icon. I'd like to watch it more attentively again because what interested me was talk about engineering the conductor's recordings. There are interviews with engineers, producers, musicians and even a neuroscientist who worked with Karajan.
Karajan himself states at one point that the recording offers a more "transparent" version of the performance of the work, something better than the live experience which is always compromised by the listener's physical position in the hall. He seemed concerned that any recording should communicate the "spirit" of the work as he has interpreted it as part of the wider noosphere (he mentions Teilhard de Chardin). The shortcomings of the live experience contrast with the ideal of the recorded version. Interestingly, one of the interviewees gives the opposite opinion, saying that it is the experience of the live performance where that spirit is ideally shared communally and giving a 1980s concert of Mahler's Ninth Symphony conducted by the maestro as an example.
This last comment about the communal spirit of the performance reminded me of something Alain Badiou says in his book on Wagner. He talks about the meaning of the opera Parsifal as being the possibility of a new ceremony and draws on Stéphane Mallarmé's quest to find some social ritual that replaces the old religions:
. . . Mallarmé examined various figures of ritual or ceremony . . . The first thing he looked at were concert overtures, about which he said: "Music declares itself to be the last and most complete human religion." That was certainly the case then. Now, however, music has become a solitary religion. At big rock concerts the yearning for ceremony is blatant. You feel it intensely when you see how young people of all stripes share this deep yearning for ceremony. Except that it is a parody; it never manages . . . to get beyond parody, yet that is clearly what it is attempting to do. Music was once the "last and most complete human religion", but it has turned out to be a human religion in as sorry a state as the Brotherhood of Knights in Act 1 of Parsifal. It has ended up being about having headphones in your ears -- portable music players! Obviously nothing could be further removed from a ceremony than a portable music player. The ceremony is a meeting in a specific place; it is the constitution of a place, whereas the portable music player is music devoid of place. (Five Lessons on Wagner, p148)So do audio recordings ultimately fall short of communicating this sacral aspect of music? Are we impoverishing our experience of music by not engaging in it communally and sitting alone in our listening rooms or listening on our DAPs -- a "music devoid of place"?
Or is Karajan right: that the recording can give the listener a more transparent access to the spirit of the work?
The growth of my love of music, especially classical music, has much more to do with recordings than the relatively few live concerts I was able to attend as a kid, teenager or young family man. Radio, both AM and FM, was probably the single most important, followed by increasingly high performance home audio from my own growing piles of discs. But, over the past several decades, I have also been fortunate to have been able to attend numerous world-class performances especially as a Philadelphia Orchestra and Metropolitan Opera subscriber. I still attend live concerts between 1-2 dozen times per year.
To me, live is top of the heap by a long shot. Sonically, it is the one true reference standard. My seats have varied in the hall somewhat, but I do have seating preferences. And, while there may be some second rate seats in the hall, that has not disturbed my enjoyment and appreciation of the music and sound anywhere to the degree Karajan greatly overstates it. Lets's also not forget that all the great classical composers we have revered through the ages composed with only live performance in mind. There was nothing else. Yes, some contemporary composers may on occasion compose for recorded rather than live performance, but those are still just footnote exceptions.
I also agree there is something special in the sense of occasion of a live concert, the spirit of sharing the music, sound and emotion with fellow audience members, applauding with them in admiration and gratitude, plus the ability to see as well as hear the passion of the performers on stage.
Audio recordings can capture some replica of aspects of that, but they also omit many others in our usually solitary listening at home. We probably tend to overfocus on the sound because we have fewer sensory stimuli affecting us from the grooves or bits on the discs or files. Detail in some recordings may exaggerate or alter the sound or musical balances vs. live. I do believe I hear things live that give me musical insights not often portrayed as well recorded.
I do much prefer the sonic reproduction by discrete Mch, where I find the sound much more natural and a better replica of live, including the spatial sense of a concert hall and its acoustic. Also, unlike many audiophiles, I prefer recordings made before a live audience, including their applause at the end. I especially enjoy the almost raucous vocal bravos that accompany great arias and performances on live opera recordings. Opera is just not the same without them, as in the real thing live.
But, more involving than audio recordings and almost totally engrossing are live concert, opera and ballet BD videos, usually always made before a live audience. The hirez Mch sound is generally excellent, and the ability to see clearly the energy and emotion of the performers, the instrumental layout, the hall, the audience, etc. can be much more deeply moving and involving than audio only. The only problem is that the videos do not wear as well on repeat viewings. You see the same faces, the same gestures from the same camera angles repeated exactly as before. So, you turn the video off, if necessary, and just listen.
But, in many ways, with opera in particular, BDs provide an excellent means of enjoying the experience of the music. I relinquished my Met subscription and expensive, tedious trips to NYC when I discovered them. For concerts, I was always somewhat cool to Claudio Abbado. But, then I discovered his Lucerne Festival BDs of 8 of the 9 Mahler symphonies, his Bruckner 5th, etc. I came to love the Maestro and his music making beyond words. Different from live, yes, but outstanding music listening and watching experiences.