Live vs Studio Recording

[mahalo]

This is not on a specific recording but general impression.
According to my opinion, there are lot of exciting live recordings
which did not appear on any LPs and CDs.
Some were broadcasted on TVs and the others were on radios.

Studio recordings have been officially available.
Most of them are technically perfect. Live recordings often have
technical defects and their sound qualities may not be high.

However, I have experienced the latters are sometimes more exciting, moving and impressive than the formers.

I cannot confirm this, but Karajan might do his live performances
with different intention from when he did them in studios.

Anyway, I love his unofficial live recordings very much.

[john]

Mahalo
I agree, 'live' recordings are more important to me, yes the studio one's are tecnically better, however they sometimes do not capture the magic of a concert hall or to put it another way, a 'one off' performance.

I have collected nearly 200 live Karajan concerts on CD and DVD some of the concerts have works never commercially recorded by Karajan such as the Berg Violin Concerto, Bruckner mass no.2, Mozart Concerto for 3 Piano's and Mozart Piano Concerto no.21.

As you say, many of these concerts are more exciting than the studio versions, while I am writing this I am listening to a concert from Berlin 25-9-71 Sibelius Violin Concerto which is quite rare for a concert performance but in this case quite brilliant.

[Rosy]

Mahalo and John,


I'm quite pedantic, so for me that "non plus ultra "of that work, is to have the version recorded LIVE and IN STUDIO.

- " Live ", has a great emotional impact. Everything is much more
authentic, even a small imprecision (!!!) or a sound away from the ideals of Herbert vo Karajan, would be more enjoyable


- " in Studio ", the ( almost ) perfect result, reveals the music in all
its beauty- note after note- is the most exalted magnificence of the composition. But the sound " adjusted " may be a little built.
That's why it would be desiderable to have both versions.
however an excellent interpretation is that whatever that is Live or in Studio.

I personally choose from time to time........

Rosy

[darkehmen]

I'm probably in the minority, but I generally prefer the studio recordings. I find audience coughs, eyeglass-cases shutting, and general crowd noise terribly distracting. It's bad enough to endure it the concert hall itself -- to have it on a recording is doubly annoying.

However, I can definitely enjoy live recordings if they are of the "official" sort (e.g., DG's Tschaikowsky Violin Concert with Mutter, DG's Schumann 4th with the Wiener Philharmoniker, Sony's 1983 Alpensinfonie, etc.), because at least then you get professional stereo sound.

The older mono live recordings -- and especially the pirate recordings -- suffer terribly in terms of sound, and I really value the experience of having an orchestra come into my rec room in dynamic modern digital stereo. The older the recording, the more it starts to sound like an old radio. No matter how good the original performance may have been, it's like listening to it through cotton wadding, or over a radio station that has poor reception.

I do collect some "archive" live recordings if it's the only version of a HvK work that's available, but given a choice, I'll go for studio sound quality every time.

[mahalo]

Everyone,

Thank you very much for your responding to my post.
Talking of sound quality, it is not often good as to live recordings.
I agree to that partly.

However, I know that some are more realistic -
I mean "as if I were in the concert hall itself" - than
in the studios. Official released recordings are transformed by
balance engineers after the recording. Of course, they are
recognized by them and Karajan. Karajan can hardly check what
were broadcasted via live recordings.

This may sound like a kind of paradox, but what the conductor
has a relation to less shows more exciting results to be listened to.

[lee]

I make no apologies for resurrecting this thread after all this time, but in discussing HvK's various interpretations of St Matthew's Passion, our own Jacques-Henri made the following observation:

"A contrario, it seems to me that the 850-odd studio recordings of HVK are somewhat slightly counter-productive for his own legacy.. Apparently (and this is heresay only since I have never attended any of his concert), his live performances were exhilariting, energetic and with a lot of risk-taking and contrasts-- which didn't prevent them from being beautiful. Too bad he didn't have more faith in the magic of the instant... "

I find this to be a most important observation and one which has been largely overlooked by the various "assessments" of Karajan in his Centenary year. In many respects it is not surprising - for example, can we really expect those opera recordings made as part of the preparations for performances at Salzburg to be better than the actual performances themselves ? Personally, I am always drawn to Act III of Gotterdammerung to illustrate this point - i was able to acquire the live transmission from the Easter Festival of Karajan's Ring Cycle a number of years ago and since then have barely listened to the studio version. The final act of the last opera in particular really hammers home this point - in the studio it is memorable; in the theatre it is incandescent and totally overwhelming. Similarly, in his appraisal in January's Gramophone of Karajan, Peter Quantrill chooses a live performance as his representative Karajan recording with the following comments:

"Were I charged with preserving one record for posterity, I would pass reluctantly over his Schumann Second, his New Year's Day concert and his Schoenberg Op 31 and alight upon Shostakovich's Tenth - not in either of the blistering DG recordings but Melodiya's LP of the Berlin PO concert given in the Moscow Conservatoire on May 29, 1969. No edits, no sonic swirl, just decent Russian stereo and collective musical intuition and nerve on the verge of what must be humanly possible. Never (in my experience) has the symphony's sense of musical autobiography (at once compelling and creepy), of living through difficult times and emerging at the end unbowed, been more wholly conveyed."

In his assessment, Jacques-Henri compares Karajan to his illustrious colleague, Evgeny Mravinsky, with the observation that most of the Russian conductor's recordings are from live concerts and ponders whether Karajan would be remembered as a greater musician if a similar proportion of his recording were of live performances rather than studio creations. Personally, I think that he may just be right. What are your thouights ?

Lee

[jhgaulard]

Hi Lee!
Funny you should mention THAT Act III of THAT live Göterdammerung, it is indeed completely obliterating, you can feel the smoke literally rising from pit and stage. I needed a drink after having gone through it...
Well it seems the Japanese arm of Deutsche Grammophon is understanding the need for reassessing the work of the Maestro in light of his live recordings -- thence the recent reissues, but there should be more, I wholeheartedly agree...

[john]

Hello everyone and wellcome to the many new members.

As I have mentioned on the Forum previously I prefer 'live' recordings, I actually have over 300 Karajan 'live' orchestral, opera and choral concerts on CD.

However, I listen to these alongside the many studio recordings as I find the comparison fasinating.
I try to collect concerts that are copied in very good sound quality as this does affect my listening pleasure if the 'live' recording is poor quality.

The studio recordings are great but they can't capture the magical moments that appear in some live concerts.
For instance the EMI Lucia from Berlin with Callas and Di Stefano, the performance of Agnes Baltsa in the DVD of Don Carlos, the singing of Domingo in the DVD of the Vienna Trovatore (although he did go hoarse at the end of Di Quela Pira, this was edited out by the engineers). Some of the 'live' Verdi requiems are much more emmotionally intense than the studio versions as are many of the 'live' Beethoven symphonies and of course the 1987 new years day concert from Vienna stands alone as a 'live' masterpeice. None of the aforementioned could ever have been reproduced in a studio recording.

I supose for me it's the excitement and anticipation of not knowing what to expect when receiving a new CD in the post of a 'live' HVK concert sent to me from one of the many Karajan fans around the world and being constantly supprised when I play it.
In other words in the 'live' concerts it's different almost every time where as the studio recording is of course the same every time.

I am pleased that this year many 'live' recordings of HVK concerts are now being released by the major companies, these of course are in high quality sound which is good, however many of them are only available in Japan which is not so good for us in Europe and the rest of the world.

Having said all that, I still love and would not be without the commercially made studio recordings.

John

[Rosy]

Jan 31, 2008 21:30:42 GMT 1 Rosy said:

mahalo and john,
I'm quite pedantic, so for me that "non plus ultra "of that work, is to have the version recorded LIVE and IN STUDIO.

Personally, I gauge from time to time........

Rosy

You have a very rich collection, John! I don't know if my thoughts are relevant, but I explain them anyway. I would like to resume the interesting topic, with a premise explanatory:

"To listen to the Herbert von Karajan's performances, it's necessary to go to his concert(the Maestro was alive), otherwise you cannot understand and steal the great charm of his interpretations!". I read this sentence many years ago, but it has remained imprinted in my mind. The book was perhaps by Enrico Stinchelli, "I Grandi Direttori D'Orchestra". I think this phrase valid in a general sense, I would say obvious, but in respect of Karajan takes on a meaning more pregnant. The aura, the unfolding of cerimonial, the strength and mastery of the "gesture", the atmosphere charged with magic, the sound that only he could create, demanded the "hic et nunc", here and now. What I wrote, show my inclination towards the record live.
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Widening the speech and by including videos (I apologize if this isn't the appropriate section, but I need to make an overwiew of my thoughts), the choice is much more complex especially if we forward beyond personal taste, with the risk that I'm in territory that is not within my competence; but I'm terribly fascinated by these subjects that have occupied a prominent place in the work of the Maestro. He wanted to leave to posterity a documentation of his work. Ergo, registrations in the studio he felt extremely good, or at least pleasant. We know how the Maestro worked to make film, and how he had the edge over the media of that time! He was willing to all for bring good music everywhere!
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"People should not look for the music, it's our duty to bring it to them!", HvK.
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Of course, records in the studio can be disguised, constructed, in short, less fresh and spontaneous than live. However, many people are of opinion that Karajan was phenomenal live and therefore all possible embellishments that can be obtained with the help of technology, were totally unnecessary.

Rosy

[David]

I would describe myself as having been a Karajan devotee for the past forty five years, but it is only really during the past three or four years that I have become aware of the existence of the wealth of live and unofficial recordings. This, I have to say, is in no small way due to Linda’s site, which I discovered in 2004 and which has given me the opportunity to obtain several of these recordings (including four of the concerts I attended). I have to say that all of this has opened up for me a whole new phase in what some near to me have referred to as my obsession.

Live versus studio; difficult to put into words, but I think that they are almost different activities. Music has to do with how the sound is distributed within an amount of time. During a concert there is one chance, the only chance, and it’s in real time. In the forty five minutes or so that it takes to play a Brahms Symphony it is necessary to have to put in months and months of thinking about, practising and playing the piece. This involves incredible concentration, but it also gives a dynamic to the performance and, crucially, extra-musical factors like adrenalin come into the equation. I really think that this is the bottom line - adrenalin.

With commercial recordings you can stop the time. The fact that the musicians know in the back of their minds that they can play it again for the final result, then that changes everything.

A live recording is unique because it captures the excitement and most of the nuances of that actual performance. Indeed, listening to the music and hearing the applause and even the stage noises and coughs are for me the next best thing to being there. The added human dimension adds up to a unique sense of enjoyment which one does not always feel with the studio recordings which at times (although not always) can sound engineered.

I understand that Sviatoslav Richter went as far as referring to the recording studio as the ‘torture chamber‘.

The St Matthew Passion has been mentioned recently in various threads on the Forum. Lee has mentioned the two performances at the 1972 Easter Festival. I count myself as being privileged in that I was able to attend the second of these performances and believe that this was the most moving and inspired live Karajan performance I attended. I notice in John Hunt’s discography that the first of the two performances (28th March) is shown as an ’unpublished radio broadcast’. Has anyone heard this?

In addition, I have heard on the grapevine from within the BPO that the year 1972 was considered by many to be the peak of the relationship with Karajan; and then if that wasn’t enough, the soloists in these performances were Gundula Janowitz, Christa Ludwig, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, Peter Schreier and Walter Berry.

My thoughts of the ‘live versus studio’ issue concerning this 1972 St. Matthew Passion are perhaps best illustrated by quoting from Richard Osborne’s A Life in Music which reflects my view precisely -

Gundula Janowitz ranked the experience of performing the St Matthew Passion live in Salzburg at Eastertide under Karajan’s direction as one of the high points of her musical life. Many in the audience would have concurred with the judgement, though Karajan’s 1972 recording of this essentially studio-defying work is more a memento of the experience than the thing itself.

I also, like John, am finding that I am now listening much more frequently to these live recordings rather than to their commercial equivalents. However my large collection of LPs and CDs is by now almost a part of me, and will remain so until I am called.

[lee]

Jacques-Henri - I am glad to learn that I'm not the only one to be bowled over by the live account of Act III of Gotterdammerung. To anyone else who has not heard it yet and likes Wagner, well, you are in for a treat...

Thank you too John, Rosy and David for your comments as well - it almost seems as if there are two Karajans, one in the studio and another in the concert hall. I'm minded of a couple of stories that I have heard down the years. The first was an old Gramophone recording sessions report by (I think) William Mann of the 1962 Beethoven Ninth - he commented on how if something wasn't working, due to the acoustics, the soloist, etc.. that Karajan was prepared to change his interpretation so that it was best suited to the circumstances he was faced with.

The second is from another Gramophone article, this time from a couple of years ago, when Karajan's 1972 La Boheme on Decca was up for discussion, the reviewers noting how tempi in the contemporaneous performances in the opera house were faster than those in the studio - as if Karajan was trying in achieve a kind of "perfection" in the studio that could never have been replicated during the course of any live performance.

To my mind, this indicates that Karajan had different attitudes to the studio and concert hall even with the same work. If the studio reveals his interpretations in the most perfect way possible, the concert hall/opera house, complete with minor imperfections of ensemble and balance, could on occasion be even more exciting, revelling in the "grace of the moment" as Karajan himself used to say.

I think Karajan recognised this too - I remember reading an interview with a record company executive who stated that Karajan was almost unique in the classical music industry, by recording a work and then taking it "on tour", a bit like a rock star if you like plugging their latest album! So people would buy the recording, be suitably impressed and then go to the concert and vice versa. Some people get very sniffy about this, confusing the commercialism with reality - that Karajan was indeed advertising himself, but in doing so he was also advertising classical music and doing so properly - none of this current cross-over rubbish that perpetuates the "classical" music scene today (eg Andrew Lloyd Webber is to receive a lifetime achievement award at this year's Classical Brit Awards - words fail me). No, whatever that was on the programme that night, was prepared and executed in the best way possible - and then Karajan was accused of being elitist. At least he used to have the best possible reply to this - that he was indeed not elitist; he was super-elitist ! Long live HvK !!!

[Rosy]

May 10, 2008 19:06:44 GMT 1 David said:

Live versus studio; difficult to put into words, but I think that they are almost different activities. Music has to do with how the sound is distributed within an amount of time. During a concert there is one chance, the only chance, and it’s in real time. In the forty five minutes or so that it takes to play a Brahms Symphony it is necessary to have to put in months and months of thinking about, practising and playing the piece. This involves incredible concentration, but it also gives a dynamic to the performance and, crucially, extra-musical factors like adrenalin come into the equation. I really think that this is the bottom line - adrenalin.

With commercial recordings you can stop the time.

Sorry, Lee if I jump to replicate David, but this post so I wrote to exit from work and only now I can put it on the Internet!
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I hoped that the thorny topic excited the interest of friends members! Very, very interesting your article, David. I regret having cut for my needs. The sentence that I captured is enough to write a real treaty, because it involves many aspects musical and whole emotional.

......Hours of study and rehearsal, which are resolved in a period of time, brief as a breath! And in that breath, it should not find place an hesitation, a small mstake, anything that had arisen during the rehearsal. It's this the magic of an engaging, exhilarating listening in the concert hall..........My Lord, why do felt I worthy to attend the performance of a Maestro who all worshipped? Why was I so intransigent? If I tell you my other similar episodes, you will not believe me!

Rosy

[Rosy]

...It almost seems as if there are two Karajans, one in the studio, one in a concert hall.

Dear, Lee,

not two, but many Karajans, he was a chameleon!
Despite my natural preference, the Maestro always manages to amaze me. Sometimes I happen to remain perplexed while listening to an interpretation of an Italian Opera. Then, little by little, within in his vision, and I smile because it's he who win, also with my beloved Giuseppe Verdi!
Does it sound little, Lee?

************************

Rosy

[lee]

Hi Rosy

Yes I agree with you - HvK was certainly a chameleon

Could I ask you Rosy, being Italian, you clearly venerate Verdi. But why is it that Italians seem to prefer him over Puccini ?

[Rosy]

Dear Lee,

I'm immensely grateful to you for having asked to Giacomo Puccini!!! Just I read your post, I decided to include an article on the great composer in the thread " The Italian Opera: G.Verdi and other great Author". This morning, at 4 o' clock, I prepared a draft. Yes, I often write at night or at dawn, because my days are filled with commitments!!!

°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°

Thank you

Rosy