Beethoven late quartets - recommendations?

[PeteH]

There was a fellow, from Diapason, André Tubeuf, who would agree with you. He was an old recording maniac, and was the reviewer of most Beethoven works (including the Bush records you mentioned). He used to say that recordings of the old days actually sounded better than the modern ones.

I'm actually not much of a fan of historical recordings and avoid them as a general rule, with occasional exceptions for performances or artists I'm particularly interested in. There is something really special about those Busch quartet recordings though - it's a pity we haven't got the opportunity to compare what they'd sound like in pristine modern sound.

And thanks for your collective concern, but I've been to (and given) enough quartet recitals to know what quartets can sound like.

 

[pe-zulu]

But even if you compare the Walcha recordings with those of Saorgin, in the same organ at about the same time, you will notice the difference. Walcha was very close miked, whereas Saorgin was taken from rather far away. You still recognize the sound (indeed, in many cases you do recognize certain stops even today, such as the marvellous Posaune 16), but Walcha'splaying seems much more intense (well, it is, really) partly because of the closeness of the sound.

Dear RdS
Very true, and your example is very illustrative. But which of the two kinds of miking do you prefer? And what is the ideal distance of miking? Most (ideally all) church organs are of course built with the acoustics of the actual church-room in mind, and should ideally "melt" into the room. And I think, I often have experienced, that the sound of an organ actually behaves in this way when listened to from many different positions in the church, even if the balance between the sections of the organ may be changed, as well as the balance between high pipes e.g. mixtures and low pipes e.g. Posaune 16F is changed in such a way, that the mixtures are more prominent when listening from a shorter distance. But when is this balance ideal? And the reverbation is certainly more prominent from a greater distance. When is the reverbation ideal and corresponds to the acoustical properties of the room? And the closer the miking, the more "present" is the organ in the listening room at home. The recording engineer has got the problem, that no good answer to these question exists, and that this is a matter of taste, and the taste has generally changed during the last 25 years in the direction of more distant miking, as you pointed out. Probably the recording engineers themselves have been instrumental in this change of taste. Maybe the future will bring multichannel recordings enabling the listener to adjust the listening perspective of the recording, when listening in his living room as if he walked around in the church. When listening to organs live I think, it is a great advantage, that you most often can choose your listening position yourself, but on the other hand I often find, that different listening positions may be good for different reasons, and the question of one definite ideal listening position, even when you are present in the church, is impossible to answer.

 

[Rodrigo de Sá]

Dear Pe-Zulu:
Of course I quite agree. It is not possible to solve the question of what distance should a particular organ be recorded. I think in the old days close miking was a consequense of two factors: the striving for 'listen to every note' but chiefly technical difficulties: if taken from afar the sound would be completely muddled.

Nowadays it seems easier to get reverberation and not distord the sound.

How do I like it? Good question, no answer. While I detest close miking of a very large organ, I also hate the hazy sound (even if that is what one really gets in the church: at Notre Dame de Paris we can listen only to a kind of impressionistic wave of sound.

The recordings of organs I liked the most were those made by MD+G in the Vogel Buxtehude series.

If you compare the recording of the great Skt Jacobi Schnitger by Vogel and by others (Helga Schauerte, and many others), you will find that reverberation is good - in fact Vogels uses it extremely well - but detail is also sufficient.

I think only a rather small organ should be recorded close. In this case it is important that this is so, because one can capture all the subtle (but in many cases absolutely audible) nuances of toucher. Small organs usually have lower pressures, therefore it is quite possible to play with the attacks. But you know that as well as i do!

About surround sound. Even before it was available I hoped the system would be developed just because of theorgan. Nowadays I am not so sure...

 

[Rodrigo de Sá]

And thanks for your collective concern, but I've been to (and given) enough quartet recitals to know what quartets can sound like.

Whoops! :shame:

 

[Masolino]

I did a search within the thread, and saw that no one has mentioned the Smetana sixties recordings yet. I have these on Denon reissues (originally recorded by Supraphon) and have come to like them immensely. Theirs is my preferred set now, over the Takacs, the Talich and the Berg. I haven't listened to my Budapest set for some time (perhaps due to its rather ancient sound quality) so I cannot say anything specific about it now.