Live vs Studio
Posted by: Tam on 26 March 2006
Lifted from Graham's thread on Carlos Kleiber's new live recording of the Beethoven 7th:
I don't know whether, instinctively, people divide into 'live' and 'studio' camps in general, though clearly for some works they do. For example, Alan Blythe (the Gramophone's ring reviewer) clearly and, in my view, sometimes pigheadedly, favours a live account. The Penguin guide (and others, myself possibly included) favour the near 'perfection' that Solti delivers.
But that brings me to another point. I don't think it's simply a question of Live vs Studio. I think that there are three categories:
-Studio
-'Live'
-Really live
What distinguishes the first category from the second two is, hopefully pretty obvious (although perhaps, and I shall mention them later, there are subtleties within this too), the distinction between a recording that is ‘Live’ and one that is ‘Really Live’ is very important. Take, for example, Leonard Bernstein’s DG Beethoven symphony cycle with the VPO. Here the recordings are live, yet quite astonishingly low on noise; indeed, there is a degree of ‘perfection’ present that would make one question whether or not they were in fact done ‘live’ at all. What seems likely is that they were made from more than one performance and edited together. It is also possible (in these cases or in others) that some form of processing may have gone on in order to remove the audience. This sort of thing would seem to be fairly common practice among ‘Live’ recordings – if you look at the back of any LSO Live discs you may have you are likely to find something like “recorded on the 24th and 25th of March 2004”. Are these sorts of recordings genuinely live? Contrast, say, with Krauss’s 1953 ring cycle – given this is taken from actual broadcasts (and he only did one of the two cycles that year) what you hear is what was heard in the concert hall, plus a little extra noise due to the quality of recording. I know it’s a little pedantic to make that distinction, but it is an important one.
For the moment, I shall confine myself to Studio vs ‘Really live’. I don’t know that I prefer one or another. I love my Solti ring for the sound. Then again, the energy Krauss brings is something terribly special. The same can be said of two of my favourite Beethoven 9ths: Furtwangler at Bayreuth and Bernstein in Berlin (where the Ode to Joy becomes the Ode to Freedom in a celebration of the fall of the Berlin Wall). Then again, I’m also very fond of my Mackerras/RLPO set, which wasn’t live. As Graham suggests, in the studio you trade something of the raw energy of Live for a greater degree of perfection. (Now, to some extent I dislike using the word, since I’m not altogether sure how helpful it is. I don’t think anyone, not even Kleiber’s 7th nor Solti’s Ring, achieves it. It’s something to aspire to, not to achieve.) And as to which is better, it depends very greatly on what mood you’re in. If I want to listen to Siegfried’s funeral march or entry of the gods into Valhalla, I take Solti every day over Krauss; if I want to hear Siegfried and Brunnhilde’s Act III duet or the Mime/Wanderer scene, I’d take Krauss or Keilberth. I’m not sure I’d want to be without either, and I certainly wouldn’t want to have to choose.
If one compares ‘Live’ and ‘Studio’, things become more blurred too. I feel somewhat cheated by Blythe’s review of the Bohm ring, where he raves along the lines of ‘you just feel as though you’re in the house at Bayreuth’ and then, as I listened to the finale of Gotterdammung (still, one of my favourite versions, though), clearly hearing the edit between two available takes. I often wish, on these records, they’d write a note telling us just how ‘Live’ the disc is; I found myself wondering that with the recent Keilberth Siegfried (though if there were any edits there I did not detect them). My point though, is that if you ‘cheat’ in this manner and take out some of the noises or mistakes, aren’t you surely at the same time compromising that special performance?
To make matters worse there is ‘Studio but sort of live’. I have a number of Mackerras discs which come from recording projects which where either just prior to, or just after, his doing the same work in concert. Moreover, in the case of Clemenza and the Mozart 12th and 17th concerti (and hopefully the forthcoming Makropolus Case), I went to the concerts, which makes them special in an altogether different way. But, one can surely assume that a different energy will be present if the artists are gearing up to, or have just done, the concerts. Graham bemoans the lack of Kleiber’s studio ‘perfection’, and I would probably agree there is less of it, though many of my Mackerras recordings (to these ears, anyway) come reasonably close, as does the recent Uchida/Tate/ECO survey of Mozart concerti (I wouldn’t say it of all the works in the set, but many, particularly the early works, are wonderfully beautiful)
Reading back, I don’t know if I’ve said anything terribly interesting, and I certainly haven’t come to any kind of conclusion (though I don’t think there’s anything terribly bad about that). All have different plusses and minuses; I have recordings in each category that I absolutely treasure.
regards, Tam
p.s. One last note – because there’s no reason why this should be a thread exclusively about classical music (I would not that Jazz, in particular, is often more special live – my favourite Bill Evans discs are his live efforts). I have two recordings of Dark Side of the Moon, the original and the second disc of ‘Pulse’ which is a live recording. The latter is inferior in every possible way (though there are probably other reasons, such as a differing lineup).
quote:
My copy turned up this morning and, wonderful as it is, I'm feeling rather short changed.
It was recorded as part of the same concert in which CK conducted the superb performance of LvB's Fourth Symphony, issued by Orfeo (the same record company) some twenty-odd years ago. So, if they were issuing the second half of the concert now, why not issue the first part as well on the same disc? Both CDs are around the 35 min mark, which is pretty poor value by anyone's standards.
Oddly enough, the technical/recording team were completely different in each half of the concert, if the booklet notes are to be believed.
The performance and sound (much 'bigger' than on the DG studio set) are, as I've said, wonderful. If you'd been there on the night and had heard these two symphonies, you'd have been utterly blown away! And yet.....
......yet, I have greater respect for the Wiener Philharmoniker studio account.
The 'live' performance shows that, in his repertoire and on the night, CK was unmatched. But the DG studio set was his attempt, achieved at great effort from himself and orchestra, to set down the 'definitive' account - something that could never be achieved in a single performance. (His 'Tristan und Isolde' is scarily good in this context - that was his last ever studio performance, but his 'Freischutz' is on a par, and that was his first ever.)
I do fear that we have lost the calibre of conductors who could reach for and, occasionally, achieve the perfection that CK reached (for me at least) in his studio work.
Oh, and on my first play through, I don't think that this live account has the divided first and second violins that makes the studio account so remarkable in the last movement.
Graham
PS This posting is in the wrong place, as only a few hardened CK nuts will bother to read it, and I'd like others to debate the bigger issue of live-vs-studio, but there we are!
I don't know whether, instinctively, people divide into 'live' and 'studio' camps in general, though clearly for some works they do. For example, Alan Blythe (the Gramophone's ring reviewer) clearly and, in my view, sometimes pigheadedly, favours a live account. The Penguin guide (and others, myself possibly included) favour the near 'perfection' that Solti delivers.
But that brings me to another point. I don't think it's simply a question of Live vs Studio. I think that there are three categories:
-Studio
-'Live'
-Really live
What distinguishes the first category from the second two is, hopefully pretty obvious (although perhaps, and I shall mention them later, there are subtleties within this too), the distinction between a recording that is ‘Live’ and one that is ‘Really Live’ is very important. Take, for example, Leonard Bernstein’s DG Beethoven symphony cycle with the VPO. Here the recordings are live, yet quite astonishingly low on noise; indeed, there is a degree of ‘perfection’ present that would make one question whether or not they were in fact done ‘live’ at all. What seems likely is that they were made from more than one performance and edited together. It is also possible (in these cases or in others) that some form of processing may have gone on in order to remove the audience. This sort of thing would seem to be fairly common practice among ‘Live’ recordings – if you look at the back of any LSO Live discs you may have you are likely to find something like “recorded on the 24th and 25th of March 2004”. Are these sorts of recordings genuinely live? Contrast, say, with Krauss’s 1953 ring cycle – given this is taken from actual broadcasts (and he only did one of the two cycles that year) what you hear is what was heard in the concert hall, plus a little extra noise due to the quality of recording. I know it’s a little pedantic to make that distinction, but it is an important one.
For the moment, I shall confine myself to Studio vs ‘Really live’. I don’t know that I prefer one or another. I love my Solti ring for the sound. Then again, the energy Krauss brings is something terribly special. The same can be said of two of my favourite Beethoven 9ths: Furtwangler at Bayreuth and Bernstein in Berlin (where the Ode to Joy becomes the Ode to Freedom in a celebration of the fall of the Berlin Wall). Then again, I’m also very fond of my Mackerras/RLPO set, which wasn’t live. As Graham suggests, in the studio you trade something of the raw energy of Live for a greater degree of perfection. (Now, to some extent I dislike using the word, since I’m not altogether sure how helpful it is. I don’t think anyone, not even Kleiber’s 7th nor Solti’s Ring, achieves it. It’s something to aspire to, not to achieve.) And as to which is better, it depends very greatly on what mood you’re in. If I want to listen to Siegfried’s funeral march or entry of the gods into Valhalla, I take Solti every day over Krauss; if I want to hear Siegfried and Brunnhilde’s Act III duet or the Mime/Wanderer scene, I’d take Krauss or Keilberth. I’m not sure I’d want to be without either, and I certainly wouldn’t want to have to choose.
If one compares ‘Live’ and ‘Studio’, things become more blurred too. I feel somewhat cheated by Blythe’s review of the Bohm ring, where he raves along the lines of ‘you just feel as though you’re in the house at Bayreuth’ and then, as I listened to the finale of Gotterdammung (still, one of my favourite versions, though), clearly hearing the edit between two available takes. I often wish, on these records, they’d write a note telling us just how ‘Live’ the disc is; I found myself wondering that with the recent Keilberth Siegfried (though if there were any edits there I did not detect them). My point though, is that if you ‘cheat’ in this manner and take out some of the noises or mistakes, aren’t you surely at the same time compromising that special performance?
To make matters worse there is ‘Studio but sort of live’. I have a number of Mackerras discs which come from recording projects which where either just prior to, or just after, his doing the same work in concert. Moreover, in the case of Clemenza and the Mozart 12th and 17th concerti (and hopefully the forthcoming Makropolus Case), I went to the concerts, which makes them special in an altogether different way. But, one can surely assume that a different energy will be present if the artists are gearing up to, or have just done, the concerts. Graham bemoans the lack of Kleiber’s studio ‘perfection’, and I would probably agree there is less of it, though many of my Mackerras recordings (to these ears, anyway) come reasonably close, as does the recent Uchida/Tate/ECO survey of Mozart concerti (I wouldn’t say it of all the works in the set, but many, particularly the early works, are wonderfully beautiful)
Reading back, I don’t know if I’ve said anything terribly interesting, and I certainly haven’t come to any kind of conclusion (though I don’t think there’s anything terribly bad about that). All have different plusses and minuses; I have recordings in each category that I absolutely treasure.
regards, Tam
p.s. One last note – because there’s no reason why this should be a thread exclusively about classical music (I would not that Jazz, in particular, is often more special live – my favourite Bill Evans discs are his live efforts). I have two recordings of Dark Side of the Moon, the original and the second disc of ‘Pulse’ which is a live recording. The latter is inferior in every possible way (though there are probably other reasons, such as a differing lineup).