{"id":13363,"date":"2013-09-12T21:47:38","date_gmt":"2013-09-13T01:47:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.musicalamerica.com\/mablogs\/?p=13363"},"modified":"2014-03-15T17:55:34","modified_gmt":"2014-03-15T21:55:34","slug":"minnesota-chicken","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.musicalamerica.com\/mablogs\/?p=13363","title":{"rendered":"Minnesota Chicken"},"content":{"rendered":"

by Sedgwick Clark<\/strong><\/p>\n

Will the Minnesota Orchestra board of directors and musicians union commit corporate hari-kari? The deadline imposed on the players by the board is this Sunday, September 15. Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak is quoted in the local StarTribune<\/em>, \u201cLock yourself in a room and shut up about it until you come back with a solution. The community is disgusted and desperate.\u201d Among my vivid memories of these artists is a program of Beethoven\u2019s Grosse Fuge <\/em>and Sibelius\u2019s Kullervo <\/em>at Carnegie Hall on February 28, 2010. One does not need to live in Minneapolis to be \u201cdisgusted and desperate.\u201d See my blog of August 31 for details.<\/p>\n

Are Recordings \u201cHonest\u201d?<\/strong><\/p>\n

For over three decades now, digital editing has rendered studio recordings unreliable as documents of a performance, just as photoshop has destroyed the verity of photographs. It\u2019s only in a live concert that we can truly judge a performer\u2019s technical acumen or artistic ability\u2014and still one may legitimately wonder if the hall might be assisted by discreet miking.<\/p>\n

So my interest was piqued a few days ago by this paragraph in a Decca press release of a Liszt recital by a young pianist who has reportedly achieved renown via U Tube:<\/p>\n

“A fiery performer who likes to take risks, Valentina Lisitsa recorded one version of the recital direct to analogue tape, transferred without edits for a special edition LP product. Due to size limits, the LP edition contains slightly less repertoire than the full album.\u00a0 Lisitsa simultaneously recorded in high-resolution 24-bit digital audio to make the most of modern music formats.”<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t know how the two separate performances could be recorded \u201csimultaneously\u201d\u2014\u201cin the same sessions\u201d would be more accurate\u2014but I\u2019m being picky. Actually, truth in recordings became a thing of the past about 30 years before digital editing. Prior to the advent of tape, in 1948, records were made in approximately four-minute \u201ctakes,\u201d and the artist(s) would make as many takes as necessary (or affordable) to achieve a releasable result. Some were barely that: Listen to the shocking hash that Artur Schnabel makes of the mighty solo-piano fusillade that opens the development section of the Brahms D-minor Piano Concerto\u2019s first movement. I played that passage for David Dubal and Ruth Laredo one afternoon at WNCN, and they nearly fell out of their chairs.<\/p>\n

No pianist today would dare play like that in public. Note-perfect performances are simply expected. We\u2019ll see how Lisitsa\u2019s honest LP measures up to the digital \u201cproduct\u201d when the recordings are released on October 8.<\/p>\n

Looking Forward<\/strong><\/p>\n

My week\u2019s scheduled concerts (8:00 p.m. unless otherwise noted):<\/p>\n

9\/17. Avery Fisher Hall. New York Philharmonic\/Constantine Kitsopoulos; Alec Baldwin, narrator. Hitchcock! <\/em>Excerpts from Vertigo<\/em>, North by Northwest<\/em>, To Catch a Thief<\/em>, Dial M for Murder<\/em>, and Strangers on a Train <\/em>with soundtracks performed live.<\/p>\n