Noises Off

Busses passing cathedrals on organ records. The worst example was a recital from Bath Abbey. I can't say I remember a CD that has this problem.

Nime

On the Cowboy Junkies Trinity Sessions album you can clearly hear the singer's size 10s stomping away in time, unfortunately the sound is travelling up the mike stand and into the mix.

Rory Block's Mama's Blues has an Amtrak train going past the studio at the start of Terraplane Blues. The were about to record the track, and rather than start again, she kept it in the mix.

Brad

I once heard an organCD, - don´t remember which one, with birdsong in the background, and the birds surely didn´t know the music that well.

Nime
By the way, why are you in exile?
Venlig hilsen

The "studio" recording of the Razumovsky Quartets (Beethoven) by the Alban Berg Quartet has birdsong clearly audible in the quiet bits throughout! I STILL can't decide whether that's cute or irritating, but I love the performances.

Generally, high resolution hi-fi systems supply one with lots of information concerning what the audience were up to in live performances. Sometimes this adds to the sense of "being there", and increases enjoyment. Other times, it heats the blood: in Brendel's recent live recording of the great Schubert B flat major sonata from the Royal Festival Hall - a monumental performance! - some twat's digital watch goes off during the quiet opening bars, moments after the great man begins. IRRITATING!! I tend not to mind the maestro's own vocal contributions, however.

EW

Oscar Peterson and Keith Jarrett. Both tend to offer vocal accompaniments to their improvisatory explorations. On the whole, I don't mind foot-tapping and humming, I think it's an aspect of the performance. I would draw the line at mobiles and digital watches though.

Kevin

Pablo Casals was a groaner, but the quality always shone through. I also have a Janos Starker CD where he plays Kodály and you hear his breathing and slight groaning, it never detracted from the performance for me.

Thelonius Monk is another pianist with the same penchant for groaning as Jarrett. There is a Nigel Kennedy LP where you can hear his feet moving about.

It is told - I have not heard it, that you can hear gun-noise on Wanda Landowskas Scarlattisonatas (HMV, recorded in Paris during the war) and on a recording of Beethovens Emperorconcerto by Gieseking (recorded in Berlin 1945). But in these cases the noise seems to have been unavoidable.

I didn't want to mention the Furtwängler recording of Die Meistersinger from the Festspielhaus, Bayreuth 1943 - I don't think there are any unusual audience noises, but psychologically I find it hard to listen to.

There's a famous Pink Floyd bootleg, recorded at Toronto's Maple Leaf Gardens on 11th March 1973.

The performance it captures is one of the Floyd's best of that year, and the recording quality is surprisingly good for the time. However, a bloke in the audience - for reasons best known to himself - shouts "YEESHKUL!" all the way through the concert; his ejaculations are picked up by the bootlegger's mike.

Amusing at first, it becomes a right pain in the arse after a while.

The title of the boootleg album? Yeeshkul!, naturally.

Kevin

try some bud powell jazz piano. He seems to keep up an almost constant humming/drone to himself as he plays. unfortunately I can't seem to get past that yet.

If you listen carefully to The Ocean on Led Zeps's Houses Of The Holy, you'll hear a phone ringing.

Mark S

Errol Garner, the great jazz pianist("Misty") used to grunt almost-words along with the music when he played; this is parodied in the lounge-jazz section of the Beatles' recording "You Know My Name, Look Up The Number".

"Hit Me! Hummmmbbbllmm..."

Tethered Moon - Tosca.
God, without the permanent moaning, nagging and bragging of the pianist, this could be one of last years top CD's !

Stefan

I have a disc of Purcell's music for Queen Mary, recorded at Westminster Abby and you can clearly hear the traffic noises.

Then there's the famous Du Pre recording of Elgar's cello concerto. Apparently (and I've not actually listened to it, so I can't say for sure) once they remastered it onto cd there was the noise of a phone ringing at the start!

Many conductors and pianists are particularly bad for grunting (Brendel in particular). The worst example I've come across was actually at a live concert (so doesn't really count). It was at the 2003 Edinburgh festival (I think), Murray Perahia and Academy of Saint Martin in the Fields. Not only was it an especially bad concert, but at times you could hear Perahia singing along (which some conductors do), what was especially bad was that he was out of tune!

Speaking of live music, I was at a concert recently (can't remember what) where the pianist could be heard practising off stage during the first piece of music (which wasn't supposed to feature a piano). And in a recent Mahler 7 the off-stage percussion during the second movement caused bemused looks (and even mutterings) in the audience, which could have been avoided if the programme had contained some half-way competent notes. That's about all the examples I can think of for now, but I'm sure there are many, many more......


regards,

Tam