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Musical Discussions
Topic: Very strange

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Posted by Romy the Cat on 05-14-2007


It was a mystery for me. I love Stravinsky but I hate the “Right of Spring”.

I made so many attempts to “get” the “Right of Spring” that it became almost masochistic – considering that I do love and appreciate many other Stravinsky works. I own dozens of different versions that was masochistically inflicted on myself trying to understand this piece but this music never made sense to me and I always felt almost annoyed with “Right of Spring”.

So, what do you know? Yesterdays I got interesting experiences. I got home, turned my playback and tuned my tuner to WHRB. We luck Bostonians now in the period of the WHRB’s spring orgies with some cool programming, available to be accessed via higher bandwidth stream of live programming: (extremely cool for work!!!)

http://www.whrb.org/pg/MayJun2007.pdf

So, I got home, turned the tunes and it was the middle of “Right of Spring”.  For whatever reasons it suddenly sounded so interesting to me that I immediately turned my recorder. For the very first time I found the play of the “Right of Spring” not juts interesting but incredibly beautiful. It was something new to me….

The performance was by Philadelphia Orchestra lead by Riccardo Muti. I did not have this recording before. I do not know how Muti’s version is interesting among other performances of this peace – the “Right of Spring” never was anything that I cared. Still, I later was playing the fragments I managed to record and I loved it more and more. (I will get this CD)

What always annoyed me in the “Right of Spring” that it had zillion popping up out of music vulgar sound that I am sure organized with meaning but never inside my head. To me the “Right of Spring” always was like a sonic depicture a that liquid metal robot form Terminator II when he was dropped in the end of the film into melted metal with all those splashes of steel frying in all directions…  In this recoding with The Philadelphia and Muti for whatever reasons I did not fee this way. It was very musical, violent and brutal but very connected, rational and with a perfect balance between the “musical splashes” and the intention of the longer phrases.

I liked it and I am glad that my period of the “Right of Spring” virginity is over. Not I know how this piece should sound in order I understand or at least do not reject it.

Rgs,
Romy the caT

Posted by Antonio J. on 05-15-2007
I've tried to listen online to WHRB, they're supposed to be broadcasting the continuation of Stravinsky's orgy, but all I get is a stream with some pop singer. I've checked their schedule and it says nothing about orgys, and lists several shows like "Jazz Spectrum", "Afternoon concert", etc. I wonder if this lady pop singer has anything to do with jazz.... Anyway, is it possible to reach through internet the orgy stream?

Regards.

Posted by Romy the Cat on 05-15-2007
 Antonio J. wrote:
I've tried to listen online to WHRB, they're supposed to be broadcasting the continuation of Stravinsky's orgy, but all I get is a stream with some pop singer. I've checked their schedule and it says nothing about orgys, and lists several shows like "Jazz Spectrum", "Afternoon concert", etc. I wonder if this lady pop singer has anything to do with jazz.... Anyway, is it possible to reach through internet the orgy stream?.
I do not, Antonio, I never had discrepancies between their air programming and online-stream. In fact the high bandwidth steam is quite good quality. The online-stream has 5-6 seconds delay and it is about it. Perhaps you confused the time conversion. Here in Boston, we are under “US’s Eastern Time”, which is GMT minus 5 hours….

Posted by Antonio J. on 05-15-2007
I go to the WHRB's main page, click on the "Tune in regular stream" button and the stream starts. Right now (13:59 in Spain which is about 9am in Boston) it is a girl singing with a guitar. Unless I'm having the time conversion wrong, the Stravinsky's orgy should have started about an hour ago, looking at the pdf you posted. Oh wait, the Stravinsky orgy is starting right now!!!!!! It was just the time difference which I thought was smaller than it is. We're 6 hours away, not 5 as I thought.
Oh yeah, sound is pretty decent. I've assembled a weird set up into this smallish room that sounds pretty right with this lossy streams.

Thanks for the heads up Romy, I'm going to have a lot of fun with this.

Cheers,

A.

Posted by Antonio J. on 05-15-2007

I wonder if  you have tried different players to listen to mp3 streams. Maybe you're listening the wma stream.
These pieces for violin and piano they're playing right now are wonderful (12:50 your time). I didn't know them. Thanks again for pointing us to this gem.


Posted by steverino on 05-25-2009
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Romy wrote " The performance was by Philadelphia Orchestra lead by Riccardo Muti. I did not have this recording before. I do not know how Muti’s version is interesting among other performances of this peace – the “Right of Spring” never was anything that I cared. Still, I later was playing the fragments I managed to record and I loved it more and more. (I will get this CD)

The Muti recording of Rite of Spring has a Mobile Fidelity pressing as well as EMI Angel. It is the best sonic recording of the piece ever in my view. Many recordings of Rite are simply awful in sonic terms and this is a work which demands some reasonable level of audio fidelity to hear correctly. More generally I feel that poor recordings disproportionately negatively affect modern (dissonant) music. The recordings strip out all of the overtones which permit the dissonant harmonies to blend better in the concert setting. In contrast romantic and classic works have so much harmonic padding or clarity that they survive even in mediocre recordings. Listen to the Muti Rite then the one by Boulez on Columbia. The performances are both good in my view but the terrible Columbia recording kills the piece.

Posted by Romy the Cat on 05-26-2009
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 steverino wrote:
More generally I feel that poor recordings disproportionately negatively affect modern (dissonant) music.

Very valid point, particularly in case of Stravinsky. Do you want some “kink” in this subject? There is even more advanced way to benefit the “modern (dissonant) music to “medicine” if with FM modulation-demodulation.  I know - it sounds idiotically but I can listen quite a lot of modern music pleasingly over my FM and if I own those CD/LP I would toss them in garbage…

The Cat

Posted by montepilot on 05-26-2009
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If not for my own personal experience I would never have believed FM radio broadcast could be taken seriously.  Recently I had the opportunity to hear a very highly developed audio system with outstanding phono and CD playback.  After listening to music in both CD then vinyl which was excellent in its own way, my host played some recordings of performances recorded from live broadcast of Boston Symphony and other performers at Symphony hall.  It was simply astounding.  I sat in stunned silence.  The playback was from the perspective of being on stage with the performers. The dynamic range was incredibly powerful when called for. Soft passages had all the delicacy and finesse with no loss of transparency whatsover. The sound was as clear as crystal. It was unbelievable that this came from the "radio." 

What my host has attained over the last few years of recording from live broadcast are performances that will never be repeated again and I would surmise that if they were ever to be later issued in CD or SACD they would not compare with what was captured from the airwaves. This was the most alive sound I've ever heard in an audio playback system.  I'm still overwhelmed by what I heard!

Regards,

montepilot

Posted by steverino on 05-27-2009
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Romy said: There is even more advanced way to benefit the “modern (dissonant) music to “medicine” if with FM modulation-demodulation.  I know - it sounds idiotically but I can listen quite a lot of modern music pleasingly over my FM and if I own those CD/LP I would toss them in garbage…

I assume the " benefit " referred to occurs both with live music and with CDs transmitted over the FM. Again I'm not an expert on FM transmission but the FM does roll off upper treble response quite noticeably which probably helps. Most recordings have far too much treble energy from too close micing. Also don't FM towers use giant tubes in the transmitter!? Live broadcast is a qualitatively different thing than anything else and shows the negative effect not only of committing the sound to disc but then having to decode the disc (whether LP or digital) compared with a direct mic feed. After all most popular music and these days maybe some classical are heard through mic feeds (and speakers) at the concert itself. Steverino

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