background noises on recordings
Sat, Dec 15 2012, 2:11PM
#2
RE: background noises on recordings
Over time, recorded noises off can become part of the score, like clicks and pops on old vinyl discs. We miss them when we hear a 'clean' performance.
On an old Turnabout vinyl of Richter playing Debussy's Preludes Book II, a live performance somewhere in France I believe, there are all kinds of unscored additions. The town clock, chiming as Richter starts into Brouillards and again in Les fees sont d'exquises danseuses, is atmospheric and welcome. I miss it when I hear other performances. Not so whatever happens over the last notes of Bruyeres - either a door slamming or the piano lid crashing down.
Coughs and cellphones are a different story. We all get colds, we all (nearly) own cell phones. Inability to control either is a form of self indulgence or lack of consideration for others that is just part of some peoples' make-up.
This ^. Indeed, some of the recorded sounds like a gust of wind outside, the tolling of a clock or some birdsong might not be in the score, but they add a lot of warmth and liveleness to a recording. The trend for crystal clear records, cleansed of every extraneous noise is not one for the better, and perhaps even an argument for the point Cage was trying to make with 4'33".
I suppose the important point is whether it blends in with the music or distracts you from it. And for me, the latter is the case with that Jansen record I mentioned. Apart from atmospheric sounds, I certainly don't have a problem with some human sounds (in John Zorn's Bar Kokhba, for instance, you can also hear some breathing, the sound of the players body touching the instruments etc, but it's all very subtle and gives the record a feeling of intimacy rather than that it distracts), but sometimes it's just too much.
If anybody doesn't already know it, can I point them towards the 1986 recital of Haydn Sonatas by Sviatoslav Richter, recorded live - at Besancon, if memory serves me correctly. It is on Vol III of the Decca Richter series.
As he commences the ethereal Largo of the Sonata in B flat HobXVI:2, a gentle rumble of distant thunder hints at what is to come. Richter quietly but magisterially unfolds the glacially beautiful music against the accompaniment of what must have been a rip-snorter of a storm. Unforgettably moving.
Sometimes extraneous noises are well worth having!
Macsporran