Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Reply #46 – 2009-04-17 08:30:39
It's like when you go to the symphony, and the old men are coughing—same thing," Fremer says. Necessary impurities. Reminders of being in the real world. <RANT> Well this is precisely why they should ban old people who can't control themselves and/or ill people from live performances of classical music which are going to be recorded. Sometimes the coughing is so well timed to coincide with the quiet passages that the cynical part of me wonders if these old farts aren't simply trying to get a part of them immortalised prior to their final exit. I listened to the Koln Concert by Jarrett (a live recording of jazz solo piano), noticeable for the lack of coughing and spluttering common on many live classical recordings, I assume because the audience was a little younger, and I realised how some of the great Mahler recordings could have been without the audio Chinese water torture of irregular respiratory explosions. Furthermore, if someone's going to have a coughing fit, if they weren't so selfish they could remove themselves from the concert until they've recovered, but no, they mustn't miss the opportunity to be recorded spewing phlegm and/or snot into a hanky. The thing is Richter's chair, or Glenn Gould's creaky chair and humming along don't bother me in the slightest because it's part of them making music, what bothers me about the Fremer's so-called "Necessary impurities. Reminders of being in the real world" is how necessary are they really? Likewise, since CD got rid of all of those UNNECESSARY clicks and pops, why romanticise them - it's like romanticising horse flies or mosquitos. </RANT> C.