Live Concerts always better?

Well, it’s always going to be pot luck but for me a good live performance is hard to beat. The downside is poor acoustics (venue and/or indifference of the sound people), uninspired, uninterested playing, not playing off each other, pagers and mobile phones going off, people talking on mobiles, or people just talking. And rock concerts are even worse….

Saw Lizz Wright recently in a venue that did no favours acoustically and where her band took a while to get their act together, but from the first moment she opened her mouth 'til the last song she performed with Dave Sanborn it was magical. She did an encore of Amazing Grace that reduced both my mother and my partner to tears. There is nothing I have heard recorded that can replicate that emotionality. One can recognise a great performance, but there is still something intangible missing.

I find that I do get consistently more pleasure from recordings as I have become increasingly intolerant of the audience noises, unpreventable coughing through to totally unacceptable rudeness. I had to be physically restrained from physically intervening in the conversation between two women who insisted on having a conversation, on and off, throughout the whole concert. What they were there for I have no idea, but they were lucky, not to have been at such a fantastic concert, but to have made it home without blemishes

The only way to listen to the Pogues is standing, half pissed, at the front of a sweating, heaving theatre. It cannot be bettered.

bob

For that exact reminder and memory of a gig almost 23 years ago to the day

Edit: Thanks to Google , I stand corrected - it was 10th October 1984, so 21 years. Ah, happy days

quote:

Originally posted by Huwge:
Saw Lizz Wright recently ... from the first moment she opened her mouth 'til the last song she performed with Dave Sanborn it was magical.

Good to hear she is good live. She's playing here in Edinburgh on the 31st and I'm looking forward to it.

On the more general point, the sound quality at most gigs is pretty poor but the atmosphere ( especially in a no-smoking venue!) is what we go for.

For classical music the sound can be much better and the dynamics of an orchestra in full flow are impossible (IMHO) to reproduce in a living room. So hopefully there will always be an audience for live concerts even when we all have a pico-ipod implant.

Ian

quote:

On the more general point, the sound quality at most gigs is pretty poor but the atmosphere ( especially in a no-smoking venue!) is what we go for

I agree the atmosphere seeems to make up for the failures of the sound systems/halls. Rush last year being a case in point. It was also non-smoking (appart from the ignorant woman and her pal on the other side of the aisle).I asked her "What she didn't understand about NO smoking ". She told me "Not to be so rude" Doh!

Howard

For me an issue is cost and convenience; often live gigs are too expensive for me (>$100 to see the Stones or McCartney, and that's for a mediocre seat), and getting there to see them a pain (I live outside Seattle, driving in and fighting traffic & crowds is rapidly losing its appeal). The other thing is, for most acts, you can wait six months and get the show on DVD for (relatively) peanuts, see it in the comfort of your own home (pausing the performance in mid-song if you need to whiz or make some popcorn).

Having said all that, if Jeff Beck tours at least once more I shall endure any privation to see him in concert.

quote:

Originally posted by Fredrik H:
Dear Friends,

The best listening, at its best, is always at a live concert, but I think there are many concerts which only go moderately well, or sometimes are not fine at all.

There are many dull, and downright poor performances to be found in recordings, and one only nead read Todd Arolla's comprehensive surveys of the Beethoven Piano Sonatas to realise that poor efforts seem to outnumber the successful ones, BUT I think that with care and time it is possible to find performances on record that are more engaging musically, than most live concerts.

There are concerts I went to over the years that I shall never forget, and this represents the best musical experience possible, but honestly I can say that I get just as much pleasure from a great performance on record as I would from most, more average, concerts.

Anyone care to comment on their own experiences on this?

Sincerely, Fredrik

Believe it or not, I own thirtyfive complete recordings of Beethovens piano sonatas, among which the most inportant ones except the Annie Fischer cycle. My conclusion is, that almost every cycle is worth listening to - only a few pianists make a complete Beethoven cycle, if they haven´t got anything personal to say about the music. Some musicians feel more at home in live recordings, but they are few. I would say that even the recitals of Kempff and Brendel , which I attended many years ago, did not surpass their contemporary studio recordings.

Dear pe-zulu,

I only have one! But I do love the music, and have a number rather good supplimentary individual performances. Only three artist are represented. Schnabel, Fischer and Solomon. Each has something very special to offer, though I would love to find a more modern set that is in that league!

In this music, quartets, and Bach, I find the gramophone able to bring me closer to the music making than most public concerts, usually given in Hall more suitable for symphony orchestras...

I heard the Choral and Eighth of Beethoven in the Festival Hall years ago under Yansons. I shall never forget that, or a performance in the same place of Mozart's Jupiter played by the English Chamber Orchestra under Philip Ledger, who is not well known nowadays, sadly. essentually he was a church musician, but he got that concert onto the highest level...

All the best, Fredrik

Dear Friends,

It has recently struck me again that the main justification for the gramophone must be that it allows us to revisit the artistry of recreative performing artists, which however fine they were in the concert hall are no longer of this world, and so the record is bound to be better than silence in their cases!

Interestingly I was rereading a speech Elgar made at the opening of the Oxford Street HMV shop in 1925 or 26, where he made this very point, long before much historical perspective was available to record buyers, and thus rendering the comments all the more perceptive, I would think. Maybe this explains his particular enthusiasm for recording even given the trials of stopping for side-breaks and so on...

As I write this I am listening for the third time today to Alan Civil playing Mozart. What a loss for me if I had never listened these entrancing performances!

Sincerely, Fredrik

For me it's very dependent on the quality of the performance, and a bad performance live is always beaten by a good recording at home. However, in a great many ways a good performance live is better than a 'great' performance on CD.

Of course, a lot of this can be colored by the fact that so many of our recordings are so good and often impossibly perfect (due to their mixtures of takes, etc.). This is one reason why I try to never listen to the recording of something very close before I go and see it live as it is very often a disappointment. On the other hand, I've never found a record that really gets me close to some of the best performances I've every heard (such as the great Harding Beethoven Seven I saw at Aldeburgh a few years back).



regards,

Tam

quote:

Originally posted by Tam:
For me it's very dependent on the quality of the performance, and a bad performance live is always beaten by a good recording at home. However, in a great many ways a good performance live is better than a 'great' performance on CD.

[...].

regards,

Tam

Dear Tam,

This was brought home to me very clearly some years ago. I went to a prom performance of Walton's First Symphony, which was glorious, but when the BBC produced the recording on the cover of thier Music magaisine, it was quite a dull performance on repeated listening...

Conclusion for me was that the 'live' element of being in ther RAH with a real band had lifted the effect, but that it was not so fine in the cold light of day, which in my view makes successful live recordings all the more remarkable. Furtwangler used to comment that the Radio had a way of eliminting a large part of the emotion in performance, so I guess the microphone has a way of reducing the emotional uality, so the music making must be really phenomenal for the effect to come out as grand in replay...

Sincerely, Fredrik

Out of interest, whereabouts in the RAH where you sitting. I've only been once (to see Rattle/BPO do Beethoven 9 at the Proms two years ago) and it was deeply disappointing, mainly because it was so quiet.

Also of interest, I was reading the liner notes to my original masters set of Erich Klieber recordings (well worth having) where he compared recordings to being like tinned vegetables whereas live music was the real thing. I'm not sure I'd go quite that far, but I see what he meant.

It's odd how recordings can sometimes be disappointing. The Beethoven seven that I mentioned above, I also taped the next night when it was broadcast from the RAH in the proms but it doesn't quite live up to my memory (perhaps the superb maltings acoustic better suited a chamber orchestra). But I've found the same thing with other performances (the R3 broadcast of the Edinburgh ring was also disappointing in comparison to the real thing, then again, part of what made that production so stunning was the excellent design and choreography, so perhaps it's hardly surprising).

Then again, there are some absolutely stunning discs. And, something like, say, Britten's Paul Bunyan has an intrinsic edge on disc (the Studio recording by Brunelle in Plymouth is streets ahead of Hickox's live ROH set); this is partly because one is recorded with Americans, but also because the nature of the piece means the Paul's voice (done from off stage) sounds overly 'shouty' in the live version, on a studio disc such problems vanish.


regards,

Tam

Dear Tam,

I have a good many Kleiber (the elder) recordings. Not the Choral anymore, and the LP had its problems! Can I suggest you look out for the live account of the Schubert Ninth with the Koln Orchestra, which was on Amadeo (associated with Philips) which re-appered last time Decca had a re-issuing session of old Kleiber. It is the tops. You know the style, so you will see how well it wpould suit this beautiful symphony's heavenly lengths!

At the prom, I mentioned, I was in the choir seats where Ilike to go in the RAH. Only 20 foor from the seven or five timpani needed in the finale! Not quiet there I can tell you, but in may ways the RAH is a pretty terrible place for music and yet its spacious accoustic seems to be the model for far too many modern digital recordings, I reckon.

In the best studio reordings, often off stage, and other distance effects are manged far better for the home envirionment {then in live recordings), but try to get a high level off play-back and the artificiality of it can sometimes then be a nuisance. The whole thing is to take it as it is meant, and just try to extract the music from it, rather than hope for perfection. I am pretty sure that you agree with me that a great performance on an old or flawed recording is better than a technically brilliant recording (perfection is of course impossible, because it is not definable) with a dull or pedantic performance!

Look out for that Great C major. It may well re-appear!

All the best Fredrik

Speaking as one who goes to at least one (mostly pop/rock, but also jazz and very occasionally classical) concert a week, I have to say that 99 times out of 100, live is better.

I've never heard a recorded performance/hi-fi that can equal, for example, a good quartet at a Wigmore Hall chamber concert.

Kevin

Fredrik,

That Schubert 9 was on the set, and very good it was too.



On a related note to the main topic of this thread, I was wondering, last night, how radio relays of live concerts fit into the equation. This was brought on by Radio 3's broadcast of the ROH's Siegfried. I must confess to having forgotten and missed acts one and two (which is a shame, because they have some of the best stuff if done well). However, I was profoundly disappointed by the opening of act 3, Pappano took it at altogether too slow a speed and the necessary drama in the music was missing. John Tomlinson is also, sadly, getting past the role of Wotan. When Siegfried (John Treleaven) came on, his voice was sufficiently bad that I couldn't bear it any more. I switched back to CD and got my '53 Bayrueth Krauss recording. Now, granted the latter does have an unfair advantage (with the likes of Hotter, Windgassen and Varnay) but, I wonder, does having access to such good recordings make it harder to enjoy a radio relay? That said, there are a great many radio relays I've enjoyed very much (despite a few voices that struggled slightly the Scottish Opera ring was wonderful, both live and on the radio and the live relays from the Edinburgh fesitival 2 years ago of Mackerras's Brahms cycle were wonderful).


regards,

Tam

Dear Tam,

With respect to the great performing traditions of the past where artists matured before mass public scrutiny, and the House system nurtuted the singers, we shall never see the depth or quality of talented artists available to pst generations. Of course it makes it harder, in my view to accept the standards pertaining today if one has access to a reasonable recording of the artistic fair that was actually more or less common-place in tyhe opera house and concert hall maybe till the media brought its muscle and finance, its crippling demands to play, and this may well be as late as the 1950s, in my view.

Certainly the standard of Mozart singing is as good or even preferable to that of fifty years ago, but cert5ainly no the singing of Wagner...

As for perhaps me getting stuck on the Lindsays, whose concerts I have attended years ago. Of course they are not the artists of say the Busch Quartet. Another problem there to!

But there is still some lovely music making to be found live, but genereally from less media-hyped artists like Tsmin Little than the mega-stars like rattle! Osmo Vansca is a true artist, but I leave it to you to imagine what I think of Sir Simon. I would rate HM Linde over JE Gardiner, but the record sales would suggest that Giggy is the more significant artist... I am well out of tune with many of the current crop of performing artists, Rachel Podger is one really grand fiddler, but again she has avoided the media spotlight.

Glad you think the Great C Major is splendid. One of my favourites!

All the best, Fredrik

Fredrik,

I think that's an excellent assessment of why we no longer see the standards of Wagnerian singing we once did. That said, good results can be achieved (Goodall did it with ENO - an all the more impressive achievement given how poor their showing was in the most recent ring cycle - which probably underscores your point, since the company is a shadow of its former self). However, the Scottish Opera ring was good (though Brunhilde and Siefried both struggled a little - and the whole thing pushed the company into bankruptcy, as a result we're getting no live opera from them this year ).

I saw the Lindsays earlier this year in part of their farewell tour and thoroughly enjoyed. Even more so, I saw the Belcea quartet a month or two back and they really are exceptional live (and on disc).

While I'm not familiar with Linde, I agree about Gardiner; mind you, record sales are, and probably always have been a fairly poor guide to artistic excellence. I have something of a love-hate relationship with Rattle. Some of his recordings (e.g. his Mahler 2) are excellent, indeed I have his recordings, initially to thank for my love of Mahler; however, his Beethoven cycle was so poor I sold it on, I wasn't aware before hearing it that they could be made so dull. Probably my favourite artist, Charles Mackerras, has only really achieved something close to star status in the last few years and was for most of his career somewhat looked down on by the musical establishment; he can still give a storming performance though, his recent 80th birthday fidelio with the SCO and Christine Brewer was a stunning concert (which is being broadcast next month on R3).


regards,

Tam

Dear Tam,

Sir Charles worked up through the system, and matured before being expected to be a genius. In my view that is not too strong a compliment to pay him, actually, but it was Rattle and not he, who got Berlin wasn't it? The media and big finance has total control, and the result is on times mediocrity, right at the top. artistry counts for a lot less than looks or cult-personality. Where would Klemperer get today. The helm of some provincial German Radio Orchestra, if he got that far. He was terrible slow in being prepared to release his view on the classics, with the result that he never was forced to 'produce' too soon...

All the best, from Fredrik

quote:

He was terrible slow

Never were truer words spoken!

quote:

Originally posted by Kevin-W:
Speaking as one who goes to at least one (mostly pop/rock, but also jazz and very occasionally classical) concert a week, I have to say that 99 times out of 100, live is better.

I've never heard a recorded performance/hi-fi that can equal, for example, a good quartet at a Wigmore Hall chamber concert.

Kevin

Quite. I listened to a marvellous performance of Verklarte Nacht played by the COE yesterday (flanked by even more wonderful Mozart Piano Concerti with Mitzuko Uchida) and so bought a CD of them performing it today. The home experience was rather disappointing in comparison. It saddens me profoundly that so many people seem to have decided that live classical music is "not for them".

Dear Basil,

The myth that Klemperer was a slow conductor is not really right. In the late '60s, when he was not in good health and was near the end of his very long life, his view of his repertoire seems to have changed (as did Fricsay's as another example), but certainly there are still some very fine performances from this time. I am especially fond of the live recording of Beethoven's Fifth, done live with the Vienna Philharmonic in 1969. It is steady, slow would not be an entirely fair descrition in my view. But is fantastically powerful and concentrated.

Certainly up to 1960 his performances, generally, are fast in absolute terms. Faster than Toscanini in many cases. The three recordings I have of the Choral [two in '57 and one in '60], with Klemperer conducting, are faster than Toscanini's commercial RCA recording, but unlike his reading, nothing is pushed or strained in the phrasing. Klemperer had a wonderful Rhythm, and he always judged tempi to allow phrases to breath naturally. Really you almost mis-quote me, because you took what I wrote out of the careful context. Klemperer never rushed to bring his readings of the classics before the public, before he felt he was ready. Casals was another example of this selfless approach. It is relevant to the way standards of musicianship have gone over the last fifty years...

All the best, from Fredrik

Dear Fredrik

When was the last time you listened to Klemperers 60's recording of Beethovens 7th symphony (Philharmonia) or his '51 Mahler second (with Ferrier and Vincent and the Concertgebouw)?

Dear Basil,

I listened to the Mahler concert on the radio once, and I can't deal with the music, so never mind the performance! It may have been very slow for all I know! And I have never really come to terms with Klemperer's playing of the [Beethoven] Seventh. There is an apallingly slow account from about 1967, and one wonders why it was redone given that, as you say, the second recording is also too slow! This begins to sound like I am agreeing with you, doesn't it! [The mono record is rather fine, though not really a true reflection of the joy as well as the sadness in it. It is a bit straight-laced, although, certainly a valid reading...]

But I don't. All the great artists had blind spots on occasion. I think a good starting point to discover what marks out Klemperer as a true giant sized genius would be Brahms, Mozart, the Missa Solemnis, even Fidelio... even the last three symphonies of Tchaikovsky.

It is always easy to denegrate with a slack generalisation, and the situation is far more complex than that. Alongside Klemperer, I also admire Furtwangler in the same sort of repertoire, but I don't think I would turn round and find a few examples or odd performances of his to generalise about how awful or slow or whatever he was. Often it is quite remarkable that Furwangler is considerably slower than Klemperer, but no one seems to pick up on this.

In other words, I will stick up for Klemperer, in spite of it being easy enough to find occasional fault.

As an aside I recently was given the Civil Klemperer colaboration in the Mozart Horn Concertos, of which I owned a copy before giving it to a friend to help to get him into the classics. [I always give my 'best' records away, and sell the duff things second-hand]. Though nothing is rushed, the whole way of music making is delightfully stylish, but most of all, brings out an expressive element all too often skated over. There is joy and inner darkness all mingled. The soloist and producers did well to choose Klemperer. It is interesting to note how weighty and strangely uncomunicative is the set Civil recorded with Kempe, and how even Marriner fails to find the grace Klemperer does. The soloist totally at ease with the old man too, which is no surprise given the highly accute and attentive accompaniment. Odd that, if there was anything wrong with the conductor's musicianship. I suppose the soloist could have done without a conductor if he had felt this would be better! On all three ocasions, perhaps!

Anyway, it's horses for courses, and I shall continue to send people to the finest of Klemperer's reordings, because in not a few cases, they are the best! Try the live Choral from 1961 at the Festival Hall. Incandescant is one word, but that is too simplistic. Easier to listen and be moved deeply! Testament SBT 1332.

All the best from Fredrik

I went to see The Shadows Final Tour gig at Plymouth Pavillions. I've seen The Shads as a band and Hank Marvin goin' solo several times. The music-making was top notch and Hank Marvins legendary guitar was as delicate and intricate as ever, however, the resident PA rig let the band and audience down IMHO.

I have subsequently bought the DVD of the show recorded in Cardiff: the show seems to be a bit lacklustre as if the guys were knackered

Still great to see them one last time and the DVD will let the memory live on.........