Hi-Rez Highway: Re: Water Lily Russian Recordings by Chris from Lafayette

Kavi,

Thanks again for posting the additional information and philosophy.

I guess I need to reply point-by-point. I hope this is still interesting to other readers. At least there’s a lot of good information being exchanged! (The text of your post is in quotation marks.)

“The seating arrangment of the Saint Petersburg Philharmonic was arrived at by the legendary Yevgeny Mravinsky, who for over 50 years "ruled" this great orchestra. Now, it would be the height of folly for someone like me to question a man of his knowledge and experience when it comes to matters of orchestal balance.”

Gee, Kavi, I don’t know – seems to me you’re conflating seating arrangements and orchestral balance. And while seating arrangement does of course have some effect on orchestral balance, that particular seating arrangement does not seem to have been cast in cement, during Mravinsky’s tenure or afterwards. Look at the Rozhdestvensky/Leningrad Phil video of the Tchaikovsky Fourth from 1971. Mravinsky was still in charge then, yet Rozhdestvensky has both violin sections to the left, cellos on the right, and the brass straight back. Sure, I know what you’re thinking – that concert was given in London, not Leningrad. OK, fine. What about the Jansons / St. Petersburg recordings of the Rachmaninoff symphonies, c. 1994? Those were recorded in St. Petersburg and again, both violin sections are clearly to the left. (Any listener can hear this quite reliably in the Rachmaninoff Second Symphony, nine measures after figure one in the first movement, where the violas, second violins, and first violins successively ascend to those wonderful high C’s – an incredible inspiration on Rachmaninoff’s part!)

“What the mikes captured is what happens in the Great Hall during a performence.”

Actually, what the mikes captured is what happened in the Great Hall FROM THE VANTAGE POINT OF THE MIKES during this performance. Why is this concept so hard to understand?

“The mikes were placed 15 feet from the stage and 15 feet up. In reality the mikes were 10 feet above the orchestra.”

This is good information. May I suggest that you include such information in the booklet notes to your subsequent recording projects?

“Any further back would have put the orchestral image "out of focus" and any further forward would have produced a sound that would be "in your face". Any further up would have, amoung other things, made the highs out of balance.”

You must be aware that different listeners have differing notions of where the focal point for the microphones is. I understand why you would not want to place the microphones too closely. (You start capturing too much of the sound of individual stands rather than the whole section.) But speaking personally, I would have liked the sound to be a bit more “in your face”, and, no, I’m not trying to second-guess Mravinsky. In fact, if the microphones were closer, I suspect we would be hearing more the type of sound HE actually would have heard as he conducted.

“Considering the 90 degree mike angle which had to encompass the whole orchestra, the stage dimention and hall reverbaration time, the mike placement was optimum as per my ears.”

This is also an interesting question. Given all the constraints you were working under, is it possible that this hall is not optimal for recording? Even if it were a good hall, in the sense that it would be more forgiving of a wider range of minimalist microphone placements, people would still differ in their reaction to the final outcome on the finished recording. That’s the way people are. Why do you seem to be so offended by that?

If I may indulge myself a bit here, I’m sometimes asked by listeners who are just getting into classical music, “So what’s the best recording of [say] Mahler’s Fifth Symphony?” When I reply that there really is no one best recording of this work, and that different critics have different ideas as to which recording is superior, these listeners are shocked, and they start reacting as if I’m intentionally withholding information: “Oh come on! – There’s GOT to be a consensus!” So I give in, and reply, “Well, OK – a lot of critics seem to recommend Bernstein. But speaking for myself, I’d never recommend Bernstein as a first choice.” So there you go. The Romans knew all about this aspect of human nature:

De gustibus non est disputandem

-Chris Salocks
(Take my opinions with a grain of salt – everything else being equal, I prefer DVD-Audio!)