How much live is "live"?

[alpsman]

This joke with "live" recordings tends to be completely outrageous. It is only an issue for commercial reasons.
Psanquin has right about Jansons M5: Heavy editing. Yes I know that it is only for minor fixation of some slips and wrong notes, but dont't advertise as live. Anyway a studio recording session is also Live...There are live musicians over there not dead zombies. And yes I know that it's different to play bar by bar, with stop and go, and that the adrenalin in live concert is all for good. So keep the spirit and leave the minor slips to the final product: the cd.
There is also a note in some review raising the question about the live recording in Zinman's Mahler cycle.
I have a brossure with the programm of 2005-06, when Zinman played and recorded the first two symphonies of Mahler. They played each symphony at concert and 2-3 days later there was a schedule for recording sessions- that mean without audience and under "studio" circumstances.

So it must put an end to this travesty. The only complete and honest live recordings I know are these from Japanese labels. where they record only one concert and you can hear some falses, slips etc. but it is nothing wrong with this, when the spirit is there.

[Polarius T]

I guess it's a cost issue: taking the gear along to the concert hall for the regular-program event even several nights in a row is a lot cheaper than renting the studio or that church and everything else for the time you'd need. But I agree with the point that it's becoming a bit dubious with this practice; as the technical possibilities increase anything will soon be possible. Even splicing is no longer audible, really. What'll happen to the idea of the "artist" for example? Is the artist the perfect performer who's "put together" from bits and pieces for the CD we then buy, or the one sweating on the concert stage with all those errors, hesitations, and waverings both visible and audible?

In other words, this all touches the issue of "authorship" too. This by the way was most interestingly broached by the "Joyce Hatto" scandal: the recordings by real, living artists got snubbed, going unnoticed until Hatto's husband using his computer copied the discs and tampered with their speed, making the performance faster or slower by a second or two and then selling the record under his wife's name. After that, the "critics" went screaming that a genius had been discovered. So who's the author/artist, in this case, if the music wasn't good enough before, until the speed was altered by that crucial one second apparently making all the difference in the world -- the original artist playing on the tape, or Hatto's husband who gave it the "final touch" that made it, finally, Great Art...? The latter was apparently a genius, then,  and hence the real artist deserving the credit -- right? Through his seemingly small creative input he made a masterpiece out of the ho-hum. This issue about authorship [and copyright ownership] will only become more and more burning as we go along.

So your questions always point to an underlying dilemma: What is music, then -- the stuff we hear on records or the thing they did on stage the other night?

I'm not sure myself, and the score, too, enters the equation, but for the live feel I simply go for the Sixties' jazz. (The recordings came out pretty well technically by then and there was a lot of that much-missed enthusiasm in the air still.)

-PT

[barry guerrero]

Sorry, but I don't feel that this problem warrants being called, "a travesty", unless the results haven't been approved by the main man in charge: the conductor. I would rather have a few, very minor editing glitches than outright mistakes. I do, however, realize that that's greatly a matter of personal preference. I'm just saying, let's not exaggerate.

Many conductors feel that the approach of editing from several live performances (rarely is money allotted for separate "studio" patch sessions) gives them the best of both worlds. I agree, even though there are minor compromises involved. Very minor, in my opinion. At the very least, it permits almost studio-like results with far lesser costs. Maybe it IS making a pact with the devil, but it's a very small devil we're dealing with, I feel. That's just my opinion.

Here's an example: What about the 1979 BPO Mahler 9 with Bernstein?  .     .    .    I would greatly prefer that DG had done some editing from another night's performance (maybe it was a one-off), and corrected the horrendous disappearance of the trombones at the start of the fourth movement's climactic passage. That all but ruins that particular recording for me. And the start of the Rondo-Burlesque?    .      .     .    certainly a retake of that wouldn't have hurt either.

[alpsman]

Let's make clear my point: The "travesty" term refers to discographic companies and not the conductors and musicians involved.
There are several cases where companies advertise some recordings as live and that is not true. As for myself I enjoy greatly some broadcast, with blemishes, than heavy editing products. In this situation-of a complete live broadcast- we have the nake truth of the actual music-making.

[alpsman]

I have to apologize about Zinman cycle. I was misleading by a reviewer in MusicWeb, where he declared the M4 to be a live recording.
I check out the RCA cd's and the company does not advertise them as live. The recordings are "studio" in the Tonhalle saal.

[Dave H]

The only thing that matters is quality of musical results. I couldn't care less if the performance is live or not, recorded in one take or the result of ten thousand edits. Standards of quality are absolute--or should be so as close as is reasonably possible, so who cares if a recording described as "live" includes edits from rehearsals or otherwise is subject to some form of post-performance manipulation? They all should be listened to and judged by the same consistent criteria of excellence.

Dave H

[Leo K]

The only thing that matters is quality of musical results. I couldn't care less if the performance is live or not, recorded in one take or the result of ten thousand edits. Standards of quality are absolute--or should be so as close as is reasonably possible, so who cares if a recording described as "live" includes edits from rehearsals or otherwise is subject to some form of post-performance manipulation? They all should be listened to and judged by the same consistent criteria of excellence.

Dave H

My sentiments as well...I only care how the final product sounds...not what it took to get there...

--Todd

[akiralx]

Let's make clear my point: The "travesty" term refers to discographic companies and not the conductors and musicians involved.
There are several cases where companies advertise some recordings as live and that is not true.

But the conductors and musicians know exactly what they are doing and are at least equally to blame - you think the RCO and Jansons thought they were just rehearsing in that studio and never realised they were being recorded to patch the earlier concert(s)?

Leaving in errors just makes the recording grate after a while - I was recently listening to Richter's fabulous 1975 Helsinki recital on M&A, and thinking that his performance of Chopin's Fourth Scherzo would be the best ever if it hadn't been for the obvious mishap near the end which pretty much wrecks it.  Oh, for a little patch there...

The best compromise is probably recording several concerts and editing from that - even if it is 'Ein Schwindel' (Klemperer)...

[Dave H]

"Equally to blame" for what?

Dave H

[sperlsco]

The only thing that matters is quality of musical results. I couldn't care less if the performance is live or not, recorded in one take or the result of ten thousand edits. Standards of quality are absolute--or should be so as close as is reasonably possible, so who cares if a recording described as "live" includes edits from rehearsals or otherwise is subject to some form of post-performance manipulation? They all should be listened to and judged by the same consistent criteria of excellence.

Dave H

My sentiments as well...I only care how the final product sounds...not what it took to get there...

--Todd

Ditto for me too.  For example, I give no extra points to the Nott M5 for NOT correcting the horrendous ending (IIRC, the timpani is off the beat throughout the coda).  I would much prefer that they had corrected this.  In fact, I will probably never purchase another recording from this combination. 

[Dave H]

Scott:

I don't know how old you are and if you were around for the glory days of LPs in the 70s and early 80s, but it used to be quite an adventure dealing with the major labels, particularly when it came to opera sets. I'm not talking about actual mistakes by the performers now--but the editing and post-production could be unreal. For example, Kubelik's recording of Hindemith's Mathis der Maler contains one side (only) of the Sills La Traviata. Solti's Die Walkure at one point had one disc of The Gondoliers, and the Sutherland/Pavarotti Rigoletto had three side twos. I remember thinking, "haven't I heard this before?" every time I changed the disc! Simon Rattle's Shostakovich 10 was fun--it's missing four bars or so in the first movement, and Karajan's EMI Bruckner 7 is missing a small chunk of the finale (and I don't believe it's ever been fixed). When BIS first issued Dvorak's Cello Concerto with Helmerson (a wonderful performance by the way) the first few bars of the finale (the part that sounds like the opening of Mahler 6) were missing completely, but they found their way back in more recent pressings (independent labels tend to care about these things). I could go on and on....

Dave H

[akiralx]

"Equally to blame" for what?

Dave H

For the 'travesty' that alpsman feels comes from editing live recordings - which I don't share by the way.

[Dave H]

Oh! Thanks for the clarifcation. Well, let me just say this--editing DOES obviously make a travesty of a performance's "liveness," without necessarily making a travesty of the work! After all, if the artists involved approve the result for release as legitimately representing their interpretive viewpoint, who are we to dispute their right to define what represents them? And if they make the decision that removal of obvious blemishes takes precidence over less tangible qualities (such as, perhaps, "spontaneity" or "atmosphere"), then again, this say something about their artistic standards and priorities that they have every right to define for themselves, and which we as listeners can then take into account in evaluating their work.

Dave H

[stillivor]

Dave, I wish you would go on and on about recordings with faults. it entertains me, and I might turn out to have some of them.

I'm a complete fence-sitter. I do like 'blemish-free' performances and ones with faults as well. i think sometimes the faults matter more in some cases than others.

in the old Adler M6, the horn player produces a bum note near the end of the Andante, and it's a moment of minor anxiety in every performance.

On the other hand there are several brass errors in Rosbaud's M7 that doesn't spoil other versions, and sort of have a charm of their own.


(5800 up!!)

  Ivor

[barry guerrero]

"On the other hand there are several brass errors in Rosbaud's M7 that doesn't spoil other versions, and sort of have a charm of their own"

In the famous words of the new-wave rock band DEVO, "it's a beautiful world   .     .     for you   .     .  for you     .     .   not me!"