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performances featuring endless takes and tape (or digital) editing: the performance is (was) the thing.
Are there any ensembles that adhere to a STRICT no edit policy? I confess to finding it disheartening that some of my favorite artists can't play a piece straight through to their satisfaction. Isn't this editing.... cheating?
I guess that's one reason I like Richter so much: he has a vast quantity of live material.
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Tinear, I remembered a really great live recording. The Alfred Brendel/James Levine/CSO recordings of the complete Beethoven piano concertos were recorded live over two concerts in June of 1983. They are live and unedited, and they are fantastic performances.
Another conductor who was famous for one-take recording was Georg Solti, with sometimes hilarious results, for instance the CSO recording of Bartok's Concerto for Orchestra and Dance Suite. These were not from live performances, but they were done in only one unedited take, something Solti liked to do when the label would let him. Another example is an old recording of Ein Heldenleben he did with the Vienna Phil, I forget which label.
Recordings are made to be heard over and over again and are meant for a completely different audience to that of the live performance. At a live performance, if good, the atmosphere more than compensates for minor errors. But to hear errors over and over again in a recording would be irritating.
But, as I understand it the editing is usually not to eliminate mistakes, but is to convey more accurately the various different nuances of interpretation the artist wishes to convey. At times this might be achieved in a live performance where an audience inspires the artist to greater heights, but is more difficult to achieve in studio recordings. The splicing together of takes from different live performances does overcome mistakes as well as audience noises and I see no problem with that.
But different horses for different courses. Fortunately there are wide choices available to meet different individual tastes, something I would think the ancients would applaud. Anyway I do!
John
Enjoying over 8000 CDs via Sennheiser HD800 headphones & a NuForce DAC9 on a Meridian Sooloos system
Hi tinear - as Chris implies, this would be the label's choice, not the performers in general - the performers have less and less control of what the recording actually sounds like nowadays. And almost any big commercial release is going to be heavily edited, especially since this is so ridiculously easy with digital technology. There is really no such thing anymore as a commercial recording that is unedited - I think there was a long thread about this about a year ago. Even most audiophiles don't really have any idea just how much editing is done on commercial recordings. Don't get me started on the unfortunate side effects of this on live performances.
Pretty much, if you want to hear an unedited performance, you need to listen to radio broadcasts of symphony concerts. And even these are usually cobbled together from different nights (first couple of movements of the symphony from Saturday, next couple from Sunday, etc.), though without any actual editing. I am a member of the broadcast committee of my orchestra, so I get to help choose what is broadcast from our subscription concerts (many orchestra's musicians do not get a say in this!). Very rarely do we end up broadcasting the entire program from just one of the performances. Only once, maybe twice in a season is a concert actually broadcast live while it is happening, and this is always advertised.
I don't know how true this story might be,but someone relayed a story to me about Glenn Gould (at least I think it was) being scolded for delaying a live performance by Vladimir Horowitz as Gould had some issues about something ! If this story is indeed true, it makes you wonder about some of those "note perfect" recordings of Gould's. I think too much "emphasis" is placed on trying to produce "flawless" performances or close to that ideal at the cost of the flow of the actual event. The music, for me at least, is about the "music" first & if you have first class serious musicians performing the music the performance will take care of itself. My hope is that the producers & musicians have enough confidence in their abilities & exhibit enough musical sensitivity to respect the music making over the pursuit of the flawless performance. I'm going to revise an old saying that is usually (unfairly associated w/teachers). The saying goes "Those who can, do! Those who can't(& here's my change),become reviewers!"
Edits: 11/11/11
None of the "ancients" lived to be my age and I'm still listening to "live" and recorded music.
"If people don't want to come, nothing will stop them" - Sol Hurok
Recording is not a game or contest, and editing is not cheating. A performance is a one time occurrence, a recording is forever. Editing is done simply to attempt to ensure that what's on the recording is as close to the artists' ideal as possible. Richter's ideal is still gonna be different than, say Arrau's, even with edits.
The bass player - David Izenon - on the well regarded Ornette Coleman live in Stockholm recordings later stopped recording completely due to feeling that every time he played should be a one-time-only event.
shouldn't record it until you can. A mediocre pianist, given enough attempts, can play small passages of extreme difficulty. Put them all together, and you have a very different recording than this artist could pull off "live."
It is cheating and its widespread, almost universal, adoption doesn't lessen that.
What does a thoroughly edited version of a sonata tell us? Hell, the engineer should be credited as highly as the artist.
if it wasn't written in a single stream of consciousness, without pause? If you want live performance go to a live performance.
And not just for classical music. Elvis was famous for demanding numerous takes before accepting something that could be released on record.The great Hungarian pianist Annie Fischer recorded the complete Beethoven piano sonatas one section, and sometimes a few bars, at a time, not moving on until she had something she was satisfied with. She wasn't even done with the editing when she died, but fortunately her great and famous set was released anyway. As a flute player, I can tell you that Jean-Pierre Rampal was well known by insiders to do very heavily edited records, most of which are still regarded as definitive. He was great live, too. Richter disliked the recording studio and most of his large discography is from live recitals. However, most of his repertoire was recorded repeatedly so one can pick and choose among various versions.
IMHO, a mediocre musician will never produce a great recording, no matter how much editing is done. Editing is needed in part because slight imperfections that do not harm and can even enhance a live performance become irritating when heard over and over in exactly the same places. Of course, some live recordings are so outstanding and/or historic that one lives with the imperfections.
[Ed. - And IMO the above applies to jazz as much as any other genre.]
Edits: 11/11/11
I like the idea of unedited, but it's just not a realistic expectation most of the time. Even some of the most highly regarded classic jazz recordings have obvious cuts and edits in them. Certain errors or problems in an otherwise great performance have the potential to become cloying when listened to over and over, and artists have to be sensitive to that. So they are.
dh
As I posted in another thread (I think it was last year), if you can't play the piece, then no amount of editing is going to make it sound as if you can.
How many edits is ok for a symphony, or should only 100% live/unedited symphony performances be recorded?How about 16 piece big bands? Only 100% live/unedited ok? Only 100% live/unedited opera recordings? No edits acceptable on a recording of Bach's B Minor Mass? If some edits are ok - even on a piano sonata recording, I repeat, exactly how many before its one too many and becomes cheating?
Do you have any idea how many recordings AA inmates love that were actually recorded in sections - with the rhythm section laying down tracks on Monday, the horns on Tuesday, the strings on Wednesday, and then the vocalist coming in on Friday? Obviously many recordings utilize techniques that require editing - surely you wouldn't suggest the Beatles shouldn't have "cheated" on Sgt. Pepper for example.
I seriously doubt you have experience playing/singing/recording, let alone PAYING for recording. Were every recording done sans edits the cost would be prohibitive. I'd bet you have utterly no clue how many edits are on many recordings you own, and love.
Can you name 10 musicians/groups whose recordings you like that have never performed live? With a tiny % of exceptions musicians/groups perform live, and regardless of how great their "cheating" recordings may sound, if they suck live their careers don't normally go very well.
Please tell us which pianists you've heard (more than once - anyone can have a bad performance occasionally) whose playing sounds great on recordings with "cheating", but sounded very different - much worse - when you heard them live playing the same pieces.
Edits: 11/11/11 11/11/11
Pianist records exactly as you describe it and says 'Sounds pretty good, doesn't it?' His old-school colleague replies 'Yes. Don't you wish you could play like that!'
The editing on a recording really doesn't bother me - recordings are their own medium and I don't consider it cheating to use the resources of that medium. Even in the days of 78's, I understand that some artists would record each four-and-a-half minute side as many as 5 times.
But to answer your question, I believe the Audiofon label used to have a policy of single-take, non-edited releases. This was mainly piano solo repertoire. I have a number of their CD's recorded by Valentina Lisitsa which are pretty amazing, considering the technical difficulty of the repertoire and that they were single-take performances. In the Earl Wild memoirs I've just finished reading, he mentions that he made a couple of recordings for Audiofon, but that he considered their apporach to recording "too casual". A couple of the Audiofon booklet covers are shown below:
Yes, I collected some of the Audiofon releases on vinyl. Unfortunately I did'nt come across any of the Litsitsa recordings. Does Audiofon still exist, I'd like to pick up a few of these releases on CD if they still exist. Oh, one more of the "bad" musical jokes. Just remember if your musical abilities are'nt up to the technical demands of the piece you are attempting to play ,play it any way & just call it "good enough for Jazz". I can think of a few classical piano recordings where the pianist might have taken this approach to the piece! I especially love the piano recordings made on "good enough for Jazz" pianos!
.
"If people don't want to come, nothing will stop them" - Sol Hurok
My sister's ex husband was a pretty talented professional piano technician. I spent a lot of time at the shop where he rebuilt grand pianos. On more than one occasion when another person of his trade would visit the shop the term "good enough for Jazz" was thrown around as a description of the condition of some of the instruments they were called in to service(which in many cases was the reason they paid a visit to his shop). Due to the fact you can't throw your piano in it's case & easily drop it off for maintenance or repairs a lot of people put off having work done to their pianos until they can't ignore the problems anymore(hey,there are lots of other keys on this thing,I can live with a few that are'nt right)& in many cases the overall condition of the piano deteriorates to the point were using it for a "honky tonk" piano is even a stretch. Be honest for a second & think about the sound of the piano on many recordings by great jazz pianists. In many cases their musicality is so overwhelming we don't hear(or ignore) how absolutely horrid sounding the instrument they were playing was. If you hear enough recordings of great jazz pianists you don't hear the piano anymore(unless you've spent time around a piano shop where prep work for classical piano concerts has been done, then you're "ruined" for listening to piano recordings). My comments were not meant as a statement criticism of Jazz, just the fact that the acceptance of using "bad" instruments was'nt the exception,but the norm.
I understand. Brilliant jazz pianists have been disrespected by their instruments for ever. Guess it's the places they have to play. Club owner: Hey, I upgraded the piano. Got it painted white.
I think the rise of electric keyboards was precipitated/facillitated by the horrible condition of the pianos that folks had to play. Terrible trade off in a way.
"If people don't want to come, nothing will stop them" - Sol Hurok
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