# Are the old recordings really the best?!



## tempo (Nov 8, 2012)

One thing that often intrigues me is the general preference that many classical music fans seem to exhibit for the older recordings of many classical works.

A look at the comments on this forum - or the reviews on websites like Amazon - often gives an indication that listeners appear to believe that recordings made in the 60s and 70s, and even the 50s, are somehow superior to more recent, modern recordings of the same works.

Recent recordings are routinely dismissed as being insipid vanilla compared to the same work conducted by Karajan or Klemperer - unless of course they sound stylistically _exactly _like Karajan or Klemperer!

I myself can't see any reason why the older recordings should, automatically, be better - so why is this?

Is it because these recordings have a reputation that makes people think they're better? Is it because classical music fans are often older and these are the recordings they grew up with? Is it because classical music lovers like things that have stood the test of time?!

Am I merely imagining this?!

Your thoughts?


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## Cheyenne (Aug 6, 2012)

Well, many old recordings are now out of print and no longer remembered, whereas new recordings that will probably be forgotten soon will of course be reviewed constantly. It is only normal people measure them against classics, and as there are so many, a lot will not come out of it favorably. The opposite happens often also, where people immediately dismiss any recording made with modern instruments and go instead to historically informed performances. And let's be frank: who needs another Beethoven or Mahler cycle that's just _okay_? If every conductor instead went to something original, we'd have a far more impressive library, including more diverse recordings of, say, Haydn's pre-London symphonies. I have about just as many quite modern performances (tons of discs by Trevor Pinnock, for example) as historical mono performances (Furtwängler, Toscanini and what not), and have no trouble balancing the two. Are there people who immediately judge the older performance better based on bias? Probably, but so it is with the HIP crowd. In general, I don't really see the phenomenon you mention as being common and a problem.


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## tempo (Nov 8, 2012)

I should perhaps also have mentioned that older opera singers - Callas, for example - are often 'assumed' to be superior to currently active opera singers.


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## peeyaj (Nov 17, 2010)

No.............


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## ptr (Jan 22, 2013)

I agree with peeyaj, No, there's a wide variety of bad and good quality in recordings of all period throughout the history of recordings. I believe what happens is, that because a large amount of listeners (read; old men) are use to or even mentally imprinted on certain old recordings, these get yelled about a lot. This does not disqualify new interpretations, it just tell you that imprinted people yell louder and wear blinders for other possibilities! 

/ptr


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## Ukko (Jun 4, 2010)

The 'older is better' thing isn't automatic, but the _possibility_ that a recording made sometime between (for instance) 1955 and 1980 is in decent sound - and records a superior performance - to a recording made last year, that _possibility_ ranks pretty high in the scheme of 'how life works'.

Ask yourself: how many recordings of classical work _zxcvbn_ were made last year, by topflight technicians/engineers, featuring topflight performers. Then repeat the question, except for 'last year' substitute 'between 1955 and 1980'.

See how the odds work?


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## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

Hilltroll72 said:


> The 'older is better' thing isn't automatic, but the _possibility_ that a recording made sometime between (for instance) 1955 and 1980 is in decent sound - and records a superior performance - to a recording made last year, that _possibility_ ranks pretty high in the scheme of 'how life works'.
> 
> Ask yourself: how many recordings of classical work _zxcvbn_ were made last year, by topflight technicians/engineers, featuring topflight performers. Then repeat the question, except for 'last year' substitute 'between 1955 and 1980'.
> 
> See how the odds work?


That is the point. There were vastly more recordings made by major companies say 1950-1990. Hence the likelihood is that there will be some unbeatable performance among them. We must also remember that when (eg) Solti's Ring was made it was the only Ring. Hence could achieve classic status with little competition. Now any recording has to compete against the classics of the gramophone. Hence anyone recording (eg) Beethoven's 5th since the recording made by Carlos Kleiber has had the bar set extremely high.
Thankfully there are some great recordings still being made. Just that they don't quite stand out in a crowded field like they used to.


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## joen_cph (Jan 17, 2010)

Of course old recordings aren´t better _per se_, but overall one will often find more variation and individual interpretation in them. Also, I like the general tendency among the best of the instrumental ones to "sing", "breathe" and accentuate more dramatically than the majority of more recent recordings. There´s often a greater sense of line in them, whereas the new ones often play down the architecture and focus on details and note-authenticity due the many cuts and retakes that are being made.

Whereas concerning vocal music recordings, I definitely prefer the more modern, post-1965 school or later (Some Klemperer and sometimes Karl Richter being exceptions).

Needless to say, if one prefers HIP style in the Baroque or Classical repertoire, historical recordings won´t live up to that set of ideals or sound preference. And there are those being more sensitive to sound transparency than others.


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## opus55 (Nov 9, 2010)

Hard to beat the champions that never retire and never age (well, sort of).. not impossible but very hard


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

Those extolled older recordings are the ones -- from many -- which survive by their reputation, just as there is a body of old music literature which survives because of a very desirable and enduring quality... and an ocean of older recordings and music which lay in the garbage heap.

There is currently less rehearsal time given for studio recordings, and the trend for conductors to "do it all." Those older recordings are often culled from a body of recordings by conductors and orchestras who may also have done it all, but whose repertoire stayed within certain stylistic realms -- i.e. more of a type of specialist. Often, a specialist in one area is stronger in that area than someone who covers the whole map.

The older audio, analog, from the 60's up to the changeover to digital, still sounds fuller spectrum and warmer to me... If I had a turntable, really decent system, I would own a lot of repertoire as found in the older medium, though many of the fine older recordings have been transferred to CD.


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## StlukesguildOhio (Dec 25, 2006)

I think Hilltroll's answer makes the most sense. If we think of older or historic recordings as anything made between the advent of sound recording and 1980... or even 1990 there is far more chance that a truly unique or special recording (or recordings) of a given work of music will have been made during that period than there is a truly special or marvelous recording of the same work will have been made over the past few years... or the last decade. 

It should also be obvious that just as we are not blessed with a Mozart or Beethoven or Shakespeare during every period in history, so there will be performing artists of outstanding abilities and unique visions whose achievements remain compelling... and at times unrivaled. It would be difficult to think of living performers who equal or surpass Kirsten Flagstad, Maria Callas, or Glenn Gould within the oeuvre for which they are known. 

At the same time there are more contemporary recordings of given works that I will take over older recordings. The HIP recordings of the Baroque has been mentioned. There are, for example, some marvelous "old school" recordings of Bach's cantatas and his great choral works, but I don't find any of these rival recordings of John Eliot Gardiner, Masaaki Suzuki, Philippe Herreweghe, etc... Andrew Manze and Elizabeth Wallfisch are every bit as masterful in their chosen oeuvre as Jascha Heifetz, Yehudi Menuhin, Nathan Millstein, and Itzakh Perlman were in there's. And surely Rene Jacobs, Philippe Herreweghe, John Eliot Gardiner, Jordi Savall, and William Christie have received no less accolades and recommendations for their recordings than Karajan, Furtwangler, Klemperer, etc... Ultimately, it seems to me that many of the strongest performers and conductors recognize that we likely don't need another Beethoven or Brahms symphonic cycle, or still another recording of Beethoven's piano sonatas and so their focus is upon a different repertoire.


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## Guest (Jun 8, 2013)

When I started building my collection, I decided to focus on newer recordings and performers. 

I thought of an analogy with baseball - we fans have an obligation to support this year's teams rather than focus on past glories like Sandy Koufax in 1961-1965. The estates of Callas or Karajan or Gould (or more cynically, the corresponding teams of lawyers) don't really need more of our money.

No doubt I have missed plenty of gems, but overall I have been happy with this approach.

So I would argue that for the health of the classical music business, new recordings are really the best !!!


(PS - Sadly, I am not similarly focused on newer composers.)


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## joen_cph (Jan 17, 2010)

To add to the first post: we´ve recently had discussions here about Karajan, and there was a good deal of scepticism even among those who had large collections of old material to compare with - Karajan and Klemperer are not considered automatically superior here. I also often prefer other recordings than Karajan´s - and even more often I prefer others than Klemperer´s. There´s usually a much wider range to choose from, even beyond the most commonly seen canon of old recordings ;-).


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## Geo Dude (May 22, 2013)

I won't address the question of why they're often viewed as 'the best', but I will say that I am personally not a fan of the style of many older recordings. I'm an HIP nut and so I often seek out newer recordings (even ones on modern instruments) simply because they're often played in a style I prefer, and for that matter the orchestral works tend to be downsized where appropriate. (I don't know of any HIP conductors downsizing Bruckner, contrary to a few rants I've seen...  )

Frankly, I would not be surprised to find people on classical boards 40 years from now complaining about how traditionalists like myself are lost in a set of imaginary glory days of 1980s-2010s HIP.


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## bigshot (Nov 22, 2011)

There is a thing about older recordings that fans of current recordings don't realize. In the 50s and 60s, there was a crop of conductors brought up through the 20s and 30s when being a conductor meant something totally different than it does today. The concept that a conductor should sublimate himself to the will of the composer didn't exist, or at least it wasn't popular. In that time, the conductor was a supreme interpreter... free to make his own creative mark on the work. The differences in approach between Toscanini and Stokowski were vast and fundamental. When you hear a recording by either one of them, you recognize their leadership immediately.

Today, the goal is "appropriateness". Everyone wants to be "historically informed" and personal expression is considered "willfulness". It tends to make most performances good, but it pretty much precludes a conductor from hitting the stratospheric heights that Stoki or Toscanini hit.

The other thing about modern music is that in the 20s and 30s, most instrumentalists were classically trained. If you wanted to play violin or piano, you learned classical music. The best and brightest were raised in the music and it was a part of them. Every hotel and theater had an orchestra that performed every night. Live music was orchestral and it was everywhere. Today, popular music has eclipsed classical music, and many great instrumentalists learned jazz or rock, not classical music. The music you hear live on the streets is rarely classical music. This means that the pool of great players today is smaller. No one today can compare to Heifetz or Caruso, and there were hundreds of other great performers in the same repetoire. There are excellent performers today, but back then, being excellent was just the entry ticket. The pool was bigger.

Some things today are better than in the past because the scholarship has developed and introduced works into the standard repetoire that didn't exist back then. Particularly in baroque and early classical music. But in the core romantic repetoire, it is very hard for modern recordings to compete with the great performances of the past.

However, on internet boards, it's easy to express opinions about things that one has never heard. A lot of what I read here about the artists of the past is complete hogwash based on ignorance. Most fans of older performers have a better sense of modern performers than the other way around.


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## hello (Apr 5, 2013)

My hypothesis is that since they're older, they've had more time to gain acclaim and recognition and aren't necessarily better than modern recordings.


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## Marisol (May 25, 2013)

tempo said:


> One thing that often intrigues me is the general preference that many classical music fans seem to exhibit for the older recordings of many classical works.


I think it correlates with age. Ask a classical fan his favorite performers and with a fairly high probability you can estimate his age. In that respect it is no different from popular music.

Recording technology has improved dramatically, in particular the microphones. Anything recorded before the 70 gives a noticeable sound difference.


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## GreenMamba (Oct 14, 2012)

I'm not sure if I agree with bigshot about the size of the pool. There are still many, many people being trained as Classical musicians. There are many more people in the world, and the pool today includes, say, China.


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## bigshot (Nov 22, 2011)

Marisol said:


> I think it correlates with age. Ask a classical fan his favorite performers and with a fairly high probability you can estimate his age. In that respect it is no different from popular music.


If you tried to determine my age by my preferences in music, you would think I was 115 years old. The thing that comes with age is the time to explore outside of your own time and place. People don't remain fixed at what they liked when they were 18. (Some do, but I look upon them with pity.)


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## bigshot (Nov 22, 2011)

GreenMamba said:


> I'm not sure if I agree with bigshot about the size of the pool. There are still many, many people being trained as Classical musicians. There are many more people in the world, and the pool today includes, say, China.


I have a theory on music that involves culture... The reason that jazz flowered and developed so quickly between 1925 and 1955 was because it was a part of everyone's everyday lives. If you went to a movie show, you heard jazz. If you went to a nightclub, you heard jazz. As you walked down the street, the street performers were playing jazz. Jazz was played in Paris, New York and Tokyo. It wasn't just an isolated musical culture, it was a part of overall worldwide culture.

Classical music was a huge part of the average Amercian and European person's life in the teens and twenties. Every family had Caruso red seals. And every family had a piano in the parlor with a stack of Chopin sheet music. But classical music was purely western, because recordings were just beginning to spread music across cultural lines.

The world has become one big overall culture since then, and the differences between living in China and living in New York are less than they used to be. But western classical music is not a pervasive influence to most people there. It isn't even a pervasive influence here any more. We are witnessing the fracturing of classical music culture into little bits scattered all over the world. That isn't a good thing. It doesn't make the music stronger. It can only make sure that it survives.

For a while after jazz, rock music was the overall musical culture of the world. It hasn't gone much further lately. I don't see any particular worldwide musical culture stepping up to bat yet. I'm sure it will come along eventually.


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## Op.123 (Mar 25, 2013)

No, most certainly not...


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## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

There is also the point that when the great artists of the past put their interpretations down they were original - at least in recording terms. Now with such a plethora of recordings younger artists have a greater job bringing original thought to their interpretations. Most of it has been done before. Having said that, I believe there are some great pianists of the younger generation. The problem they have is competing with what's gone before - Richter, Gilels, Rubinstein, etc etc


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## tempo (Nov 8, 2012)

Really interesting posts.

I guess I'm thinking about reviews of new opera CDs where you read a dozen comments saying ''really good, but not a patch on Callas, of course'', as though it's a given that Callas was streets ahead and always will be. 

Maybe they're actually right, but I find myself wondering if it's a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy, an emperor's new clothes sort of thing whereby people repeat the same idea because 'everyone knows that'.

A lot of modern recordings get dismissed out of hand, almost just because someone like Furtwängler or Solti wasn't involved. I get the impression from some classical lovers that they don't have any interest in new recordings because the best ones have all already been done 35, 40 years ago.

I've read so many reviews of Beethoven's 5th or 9th where the reviewers say that the conductor is a poor interpreter of Beethoven compared to Karajan (for instance). Was Karajan ACTUALLY that good as an interpreter of Beethoven? I honestly wouldn't agree and I don't follow why some people seem so convinced of these things. It feels as though a lot of classical lovers attach some kind of classic status to old recordings just because they're old recordings.

It does seem as though the 'old style' of conducting - much slower tempi, much bigger orchestras, more histrionics and bombast - is seen as the 'right way' to do it. A lot of those things have gone out of fashion - mostly because people have realised that the operas/symphonies/concertos weren't actually written to be played that way. But this belief in the 'correctness/depth/sincerity' of the 'old style' persists.


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## Ukko (Jun 4, 2010)

tempo said:


> [...]
> I've read so many reviews of Beethoven's 5th or 9th where the reviewers say that the conductor is a poor interpreter of Beethoven compared to Karajan (for instance). Was Karajan ACTUALLY that good as an interpreter of Beethoven? I honestly wouldn't agree and I don't follow why some people seem so convinced of these things. It feels as though a lot of classical lovers attach some kind of classic status to old recordings just because they're old recordings.


Y'know, I get the same impression sometimes... and I practically _am_ an old recording.


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## Ingélou (Feb 10, 2013)

Styles change, don't they? I downloaded a YouTube clip of Schumann's 'Traumerei' because I'm practising it at the moment. The older violinist - won't say his name - played with many pauses, milked it for all it was worth, lots of glissando. It was 'too much' for me. I swapped it for a more modern clip, which still had bags of emotion, but didn't 'do it all for you'. 

My granny (born 1889) used to love smooth, sobbing violins, but I like them a bit rougher! 

So for me - admittedly, an ignoramus - the older recordings are not better, even though I'm *getting on a bit*.


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## joen_cph (Jan 17, 2010)

Karajan wouldn´t be my first choice for any Beethoven symphonies, but I like some of the items in the 1963 set in particular (Symphonies 3 & 9, for example. His DG Beethoven ouvertures are very machine-like and not to my taste ...

But calling earlier performances slower than those of nowadays is wrong. Scherchen´s Eroica is one of the fastest on record, Scherchen´s, Paray´s and Dorati´s 6th as well, and Beecham´s or Paray´s 7th too, for instance.


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## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

tempo said:


> Really interesting posts.
> 
> I guess I'm thinking about reviews of new opera CDs where you read a dozen comments saying ''really good, but not a patch on Callas, of course'', as though it's a given that Callas was streets ahead and always will be.
> 
> ...


It is a matter of styles. Callas, of course, was tremendous in her way. But then I have a modern recording with the Romanian (can't spell her name) which is also remarkable. What is apparent you get a classic recording like Callas / Gobbi Tosca which will be hard to beat. Even Culshaw admitted when recording Tosca with Karajan that they weren't going to surpass de Sabata. Funny but even HvK thought so too! What they did was to provide a valid alternative, which is what any modern recording must do.

That is what modern interpreters of Beethoven are doing - seeking to provide a valid alternative. Sometimes it does not come off, as in the Beethoven from Chailly. The more I hear it the less I like it. Too fast - no relaxation. Now here Karajan for me provides the best middle ground. But don't forget his recordings were considered radical when they came out as then it was Klemperer & co who were considered the 'right' way.


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## bigshot (Nov 22, 2011)

tempo said:


> I guess I'm thinking about reviews of new opera CDs where you read a dozen comments saying ''really good, but not a patch on Callas, of course'', as though it's a given that Callas was streets ahead and always will be.
> 
> Maybe they're actually right, but I find myself wondering if it's a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy, an emperor's new clothes sort of thing whereby people repeat the same idea because 'everyone knows that'.


The easiest way to find out for yourself is to jump in and find out for yourself. Older recordings sell in box sets for a couple of dollars a disk. That's a pretty low risk.

What you'll find out is that Karajan's 1963 Beethoven cycle really *is* remarkable, and there are no sopranos in the world of opera today that come close to what Callas did. Sometimes things are truisms because they are true.

By the way, your idea that historical recordings are generally slow, weighty and bombastic is not the way it really is at all. Again, the only way to know is to know.


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## Stargazer (Nov 9, 2011)

I don't like old recordings, because the sound quality in most of them is so bad. You can always hear that faint electronic drone buzzing over the music, or the occasional cracks in the sound. Bad sound quality can totally ruin a listening experience for me! 

That said, a lot of people here complain about youtube's sound quality, but honestly I find that the vast majority of youtube videos have excellent audio, even better than many professional recordings I have.


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## Ukko (Jun 4, 2010)

Stargazer said:


> I don't like old recordings, because the sound quality in most of them is so bad. You can always hear that faint electronic drone buzzing over the music, or the occasional cracks in the sound. Bad sound quality can totally ruin a listening experience for me!
> 
> That said, a lot of people here complain about youtube's sound quality, but honestly I find that the vast majority of youtube videos have excellent audio, even better than many professional recordings I have.


I don't know what the 'electronic drone' is, but some (not all) of the recordings made between 1950 and the advent of Dolby had tape hiss to varying degrees. It's been a long time since I heard tape hiss... ah, those were the days.


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## Stargazer (Nov 9, 2011)

Hilltroll72 said:


> I don't know what the 'electronic drone' is, but some (not all) of the recordings made between 1950 and the advent of Dolby had tape hiss to varying degrees. It's been a long time since I heard tape hiss... ah, those were the days.


Here's a video with an example of what I was talking about:






You can hear it really clearly right at the start before anyone starts playing, it probably is the tape hiss you mentioned


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## StlukesguildOhio (Dec 25, 2006)

marisol- I think it correlates with age. Ask a classical fan his favorite performers and with a fairly high probability you can estimate his age. In that respect it is no different from popular music.

I would suggest that most likely you would be able to discern younger classical music fans... or fans newer to classical music by their preference for recent recordings. On the other hand, I suspect you would discover in many instances that the older classical music fans... or those with greater experience... will not be inherently enamored of only older performers and recordings. Speaking for myself, I have just as many recordings by Jordi Savall, Masaaki Suzuki, Marc Minkowski, Anna Netrebko, Magdalena Kozena, John Eliot Gardiner, Andrew Manze, Gidon Kremer, Philippe Jaroussky, Natalie Dessay, Ton Koopman, William Christie, Harry Christophers and the Sixteen, Philippe Herreweghe, Angela Hewitt, etc... as I do recordings by Karajan, Krips, Maria Callas, Glenn Gould, Pierre Fournier, Fritz Reiner, Wilhelm Kempff, Arthur Rubinstein, Gilels, Furtwangler, etc...


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## Ukko (Jun 4, 2010)

Stargazer said:


> Here's a video with an example of what I was talking about:
> 
> 
> 
> ...


I'm sure it's there - at too high frequency for me to hear it. Nice playing, though.


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## StlukesguildOhio (Dec 25, 2006)

A lot of modern recordings get dismissed out of hand, almost just because someone like Furtwängler or Solti wasn't involved. I get the impression from some classical lovers that they don't have any interest in new recordings because the best ones have all already been done 35, 40 years ago.

I've read so many reviews of Beethoven's 5th or 9th where the reviewers say that the conductor is a poor interpreter of Beethoven compared to Karajan (for instance). Was Karajan ACTUALLY that good as an interpreter of Beethoven? I honestly wouldn't agree and I don't follow why some people seem so convinced of these things. It feels as though a lot of classical lovers attach some kind of classic status to old recordings just because they're old recordings.

Have you sat down and listened to a variety of recordings of a given work? Honestly some performers and some conductors are/were better than others... and some recordings are better than others. I have rarely seen an absolute consensus as to the "best" recording of any major work (unless it's Kleiber's 5th). If you listen to a variety of performances you will find that certain performances stand out. You cannot honestly expect that every recording of Beethoven's symphonies (to use that example) will stand out from all the possible choices. Some will. Some won't. Sometimes there will be older and newer standouts. Sometimes not.


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## davinci (Oct 11, 2012)

Tape hiss becomes a minor issue if you are a fan of the older recordings. If you are listening for the sole reason of the appreciation of a performance, the sound of tape hiss disappears quickly into the background. It's only since the digital era that tape hiss has become a major factor in the enjoyment of a recording. 
Dolby was a major advance in recording technology, but a good quality remaster is even better and people still complain about the amount of hiss on a Furtwängler recording.


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## Geo Dude (May 22, 2013)

StlukesguildOhio said:


> A lot of modern recordings get dismissed out of hand, almost just because someone like Furtwängler or Solti wasn't involved. I get the impression from some classical lovers that they don't have any interest in new recordings because the best ones have all already been done 35, 40 years ago.
> 
> I've read so many reviews of Beethoven's 5th or 9th where the reviewers say that the conductor is a poor interpreter of Beethoven compared to Karajan (for instance). Was Karajan ACTUALLY that good as an interpreter of Beethoven? I honestly wouldn't agree and I don't follow why some people seem so convinced of these things. It feels as though a lot of classical lovers attach some kind of classic status to old recordings just because they're old recordings.
> 
> Have you sat down and listened to a variety of recordings of a given work? Honestly some performers and some conductors are/were better than others... and some recordings are better than others. I have rarely seen an absolute consensus as to the "best" recording of any major work (unless it's Kleiber's 5th). If you listen to a variety of performances you will find that certain performances stand out. You cannot honestly expect that every recording of Beethoven's symphonies (to use that example) will stand out from all the possible choices. Some will. Some won't. Sometimes there will be older and newer standouts. Sometimes not.


Agreed.

That said, I cut my teeth on many of the highly praised classic recordings that newer ones are inevitably compared to and still find myself disagreeing with reviewers when they engage in comparisons and find the newer recordings lacking. I don't have a problem with this, of course, unless we're dealing with a reviewer like Hurwitz that tends to view his (or her) opinions as facts when it comes to certain performance styles.


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## moody (Nov 5, 2011)

tempo said:


> I should perhaps also have mentioned that older opera singers - Callas, for example - are often 'assumed' to be superior to currently active opera singers.


You consider Callas as an "older" opera singer?
I consider her fairly recent---and dreadful.


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## moody (Nov 5, 2011)

Marisol said:


> I think it correlates with age. Ask a classical fan his favorite performers and with a fairly high probability you can estimate his age. In that respect it is no different from popular music.
> 
> Recording technology has improved dramatically, in particular the microphones. Anything recorded before the 70 gives a noticeable sound difference.


It's nothing to do with recording,it's to do with performance.


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## moody (Nov 5, 2011)

ptr said:


> I agree with peeyaj, No, there's a wide variety of bad and good quality in recordings of all period throughout the history of recordings. I believe what happens is, that because a large amount of listeners (read; old men) are use to or even mentally imprinted on certain old recordings, these get yelled about a lot. This does not disqualify new interpretations, it just tell you that imprinted people yell louder and wear blinders for other possibilities!
> 
> /ptr


This really doesn't make any sense whatever to me.Bad and good quality recordings of all periods throughout the history of recording ?
Well you wouldn't consider the bad ones
now would you,not much sense to that. This is a strange catch-all comment that means absolutely nothing.
The secret is performance and that can be judged by actually sitting down and listening,that's all you need to do.
I must say that talk of "old men" and wearing blinkers is merely insulting and I object strongly to such childishness.
I am quite happy to prove whether one performance is superior to another by comparison at any time and have done so often.

Aso one important point,I couldn't care less about about recording quality because it's the performance that counts.
If you want the latest recording fine,but then don't sound off about performance quality.A recording from the 50s is going to sound worse than one from last week but what does that prove ?If people are buying recordings based on excellence of sound then I'm sorry for them because there is more involved.
If you are an "old man"you will know damned well that on the whole there is now a complete lack of personality across the board---and a great recording can't hide that.


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## moody (Nov 5, 2011)

hello said:


> My hypothesis is that since they're older, they've had more time to gain acclaim and recognition and aren't necessarily better than modern recordings.


Do yo seriously think that the longer a recording hangs about the more people like it.?


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## moody (Nov 5, 2011)

bigshot said:


> There is a thing about older recordings that fans of current recordings don't realize. In the 50s and 60s, there was a crop of conductors brought up through the 20s and 30s when being a conductor meant something totally different than it does today. The concept that a conductor should sublimate himself to the will of the composer didn't exist, or at least it wasn't popular. In that time, the conductor was a supreme interpreter... free to make his own creative mark on the work. The differences in approach between Toscanini and Stokowski were vast and fundamental. When you hear a recording by either one of them, you recognize their leadership immediately.
> 
> Today, the goal is "appropriateness". Everyone wants to be "historically informed" and personal expression is considered "willfulness". It tends to make most performances good, but it pretty much precludes a conductor from hitting the stratospheric heights that Stoki or Toscanini hit.
> 
> ...


Nice to read some sense !!


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## mtmailey (Oct 21, 2011)

Well the newer albums use computer software that damage the sound of the music.To be honest the analog recordings sound better because you hear it without distortions most of the time.Now the analog recordings do have background noises.


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## Selby (Nov 17, 2012)

moody said:


> If you are an "old man"you will know damned well that on the whole there is now a complete lack of personality across the board---and a great recording can't hide that.


Talk about your generalizations.

I do not want to downplay the importance of performance, but when discussing music you simply cannot remove the issue of sound. I would have thought this to be a self-evident truth, but I am being disproven.


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## ptr (Jan 22, 2013)

moody said:


> This really doesn't make any sense whatever to me.Bad and good quality recordings of all periods throughout the history of recording ?
> Well you wouldn't consider the bad ones
> now would you,not much sense to that. This is a strange catch-all comment that means absolutely nothing.
> The secret is performance and that can be judged by actually sitting down and listening,that's all you need to do.
> ...


Oooh, You are nit picking again Mr Moody by being so utterly literal!
There are good and bad from all ages, whether You call it "recordings" or "Performances", I personally never equate Good sound with Good Recording/Performance, good sound is a bonus when it occurs, the performance (to use Your wording), is everything.. But the fact that You find most new things lacking can hardly be seen as a fact as it is a "mere" opinion! ... And the the comment about "Old men with blinders" was obviously not directed towards you, being the pillar of reasoning and enlightenment that carry this forum! 

/ptr


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## Marisol (May 25, 2013)

moody said:


> It's nothing to do with recording,it's to do with performance.


I no longer dignify your responses with a reply. Just mentioning.

To all: is there an option in the forum to ignore a user completely?
- Thanks, I got the information.


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## tempo (Nov 8, 2012)

bigshot said:


> The easiest way to find out for yourself is to jump in and find out for yourself. Older recordings sell in box sets for a couple of dollars a disk. That's a pretty low risk.
> 
> What you'll find out is that Karajan's 1963 Beethoven cycle really *is* remarkable, and there are no sopranos in the world of opera today that come close to what Callas did. Sometimes things are truisms because they are true.
> 
> By the way, your idea that historical recordings are generally slow, weighty and bombastic is not the way it really is at all. Again, the only way to know is to know.


Talk about stating opinion as hard fact - who says Karajan's 1963 Beethoven IS remarkable? Entirely subjective - don't state your views as though they are a universal truth that everyone has to agree with.

And I stand by my previous remarks - compare an old Beethoven cycle to a new one and you'll find _generally _slower tempi. Same goes for many operas and other works.


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## joen_cph (Jan 17, 2010)

> And I stand by my previous remarks - compare an old Beethoven cycle to a new one and you'll find generally slower tempi. Same goes for many operas and other works.


Concerning Beethoven, I´d guess that you say this mainly based on Klemperer/EMI, some Furtwängler/EMI, some Karajan/DG ... these are indeed among the most well-known cycles of the elder recordings.

But early Furtwängler is different from later Furtwängler and tends to be fast (The Stockholm 9th is 69 mins as opposed to the Bayreuth 75mins; the 7th with BPO from 1943 is less than 38 mins, whereas Norrington/EMI and Gardiner/DG for instance are above 38 mins).

Mengelberg´s performances meander a lot between fast and slow contrasts in the individual movements, Scherchen´s and Toscanini´s are generally fast, Leibowitz, Konwitschny and Kletzki also excelled in swift tempi now and then, early Bernstein/CBS-Sony/NYPO is very fast compared to the later DG/VPO. One could go on ...

Turning to more modern orchestral works, earlier performances of "Sacre" were often faster, especially the Ormandy mono (record breaker?) and Dorati (silver medal?), coming close to 30-32mins.

And in the field of piano music, there are countless examples of more extreme tempi in older recordings. The Beethoven 1st Concerto exemplified by Gould (and implicitly Serkin/Ormandy 1954 and Dorfman/Toscanini 1945) was seen as very controversial recently here, because of being much faster than nowadays: http://www.talkclassical.com/25478-goulds-recording-beethovens-first.html ... not to mention the preferred tempi of early Horowitz, Serkin, Rubinstein, Richter, and even early Arrau and Kempff.


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## Cheyenne (Aug 6, 2012)

joen_cph said:


> Concerning Beethoven, I´d guess that you say this mainly based on Klemperer/EMI, some Furtwängler/EMI,


Furtwängler's EMI Cycle has horrible sound remastering, any other is basically superior - Tahra is probably the best. (Just a random comment in case anybody wants still wants to buy the cycle..)



joen_cph said:


> But early Furtwängler is different from later Furtwängler and tends to be fast (The Stockholm 9th is 69 mins as opposed to the Bayreuth 75mins; the 7th with BPO from 1943 is less than 38 mins, whereas Norrington/EMI and Gardiner/DG for instance are above 38 mins)


Furtwängler was always a man of extreme tempo, whether slow or fast. His Mozart Symphony 40 first movement is ludicrously fast, for one (



) but there are also works he takes quite slow. The great thing about his performances is that they were always different - I recall a story about Celibidache being mesmerized by hearing Furtwängler perform the same Beethoven symphony 4 times in a row, one night each, with different tempi every time. In his war years he was somewhat more intense (for lack of a bigger vocabulary with words that more adequately represent what I mean) though, and indeed often faster then.

Furtwängler is probably my favorite conductor, yet I am young and rather new to classical music; is that so strange? I listened to his recordings, and I liked them more than some others I heard - what more is needed?

Here is a table I've recently been working on, comparing different performances of Haydn's Symphony 104. Unfortunately we have to deal with omitted repeats in some places, but you can probably reason out where they are present and where they are left out. I think the great variety in it, from Klemperer to Fischer, tells us enough about all these generalizations regarding tempi.


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## Selby (Nov 17, 2012)

Marisol said:


> I no longer dignify your responses with a reply. Just mentioning.
> 
> To all: is there an option in the forum to ignore a user completely?
> - Thanks, I got the information.


Could you share that information? I have been curious also.


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## bigshot (Nov 22, 2011)

Stargazer said:


> I don't like old recordings, because the sound quality in most of them is so bad. You can always hear that faint electronic drone buzzing over the music, or the occasional cracks in the sound. Bad sound quality can totally ruin a listening experience for me!


You're listening to the wrong thing. Try listening to the music.


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## bigshot (Nov 22, 2011)

tempo said:


> Talk about stating opinion as hard fact - who says Karajan's 1963 Beethoven IS remarkable? Entirely subjective - don't state your views as though they are a universal truth that everyone has to agree with.


How many Beethoven cycles do you have that you've carefully listened to? I have dozens going back over 75 years. My view is based on experience. You should try that approach with your opinion on speeds of older recordings. You'll be surprised at how little you know about it.


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## Ingélou (Feb 10, 2013)

There have been some really thoughtful posts on here about the change in the culture, the recording techniques, the approaches to conducting, training in musicianship, mental attitudes & so on. People can have a different answer to the OP's question & make a good case for the said view. I'm getting a great 'overview' here, slightly spoiled by some flyting between age & youth, fresh minds & experience. I don't suppose there is a single right answer except that one-size-fits-all, 'It depends'.

Do you think it would have made a good poll?


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## Marisol (May 25, 2013)

mtmailey said:


> Well the newer albums use computer software that damage the sound of the music.To be honest the analog recordings sound better because you hear it without distortions most of the time.Now the analog recordings do have background noises.


Could you be more specific?

Professional studio recording now uses 24-bit/192 kHz sampling technology which eventually gets down sampled to CD or other formats. This guarantees a frequency spectrum far beyond the capabilities of the human ear and a dynamic range that is far more than a tape could record, it is 256 times as large as a 16 bit recording . While it is true that digital records need more headroom the extended range easily compensates for that.

In classical music the amount of post-processing is generally far less than for instance with popular music. Mixing, balancing and equalizing also happens at the 24-bit/192 kHz level.


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## moody (Nov 5, 2011)

tempo said:


> Really interesting posts.
> 
> I guess I'm thinking about reviews of new opera CDs where you read a dozen comments saying ''really good, but not a patch on Callas, of course'', as though it's a given that Callas was streets ahead and always will be.
> 
> ...


If so many reviews say similar things maybe you are the one out of step?
Who has realised that the music wasn't written to be played that way ?
I think that your post completely fails to add up in any way.


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## bigshot (Nov 22, 2011)

The reason that many early stereo recordings sound better than modern ones doesn't have anything to do with analogue vs digital. It's the approach to miking. In the 50s and 60s, orchestras were often miked from a normal listening perspective with only two or three microphones. There was little or no mixing or editing. Some labels, like Mercury Living Presence, didn't apply compression or even gain ride the volume. The dynamics in the room was the dynamics on the record. This resulted in a very clear and focused soundstage and punchy dynamics.

Today, recordings are pieced together from bits of performances, mikes are placed all over the orchestra, and the sound stage is created artificially in the mix. This results in very complex sound fields that can highlight detail at the expense of directness and clarity.


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## moody (Nov 5, 2011)

Marisol said:


> I no longer dignify your responses with a reply. Just mentioning.
> 
> To all: is there an option in the forum to ignore a user completely?
> - Thanks, I got the information.


I suppose the best way is to leave.


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## Geo Dude (May 22, 2013)

bigshot said:


> How many Beethoven cycles do you have that you've carefully listened to? I have dozens going back over 75 years. My view is based on experience. You should try that approach with your opinion on speeds of older recordings. You'll be surprised at how little you know about it.


How many do we need to have listened to to qualify for having an opinion on the matter? I can't claim to have dozens on hand, but I have spent plenty of time comparing Karajan's '60s set, Szell's '50s set, Abbado's most recent, and Immerseel's set if I wish to ignore single-disc recordings. I cut my teeth on the Karajan set (and to a lesser extent the Szell set), in fact. I still prefer Immerseel to Karajan by a wide margin.

That was one example; for another I'm a huge Brahms fan and have about ten different sets of the symphonies on my shelf (large for me, I'm generally content with five or so), and still find myself leaning toward Gardiner, Mackerras, and for that matter Harding's recording of the 3rd and 4th over Wand or Karajan or Walter.

Mind you, I'm not denying that some people who enjoy the newer recordings and express a distaste for the older ones do so based on stereotypes about those old recordings, but I think you're casting too wide of a net.


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## moody (Nov 5, 2011)

Mitchell said:


> Talk about your generalizations.
> 
> I do not want to downplay the importance of performance, but when discussing music you simply cannot remove the issue of sound. I would have thought this to be a self-evident truth, but I am being disproven.


It depends whether you are interested in the history behind recordings or not.
What are you going to do about Rachmaninoff's own recordings, what about Caruso-- do you consign them to the rubbish bin in favour of up to date recordings /


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## moody (Nov 5, 2011)

Ingenue said:


> Styles change, don't they? I downloaded a YouTube clip of Schumann's 'Traumerei' because I'm practising it at the moment. The older violinist - won't say his name - played with many pauses, milked it for all it was worth, lots of glissando. It was 'too much' for me. I swapped it for a more modern clip, which still had bags of emotion, but didn't 'do it all for you'.
> 
> My granny (born 1889) used to love smooth, sobbing violins, but I like them a bit rougher!
> 
> So for me - admittedly, an ignoramus - the older recordings are not better, even though I'm *getting on a bit*.


Of course they are not better because they are old. It's the performance that counts.


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## Geo Dude (May 22, 2013)

moody said:


> Of course they are not better because they are old. It's the performance that counts.


it seems to me that he was saying that he prefers the new style of performance.


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## moody (Nov 5, 2011)

ptr said:


> Oooh, You are nit picking again Mr Moody by being so utterly literal!
> There are good and bad from all ages, whether You call it "recordings" or "Performances", I personally never equate Good sound with Good Recording/Performance, good sound is a bonus when it occurs, the performance (to use Your wording), is everything.. But the fact that You find most new things lacking can hardly be seen as a fact as it is a "mere" opinion! ... And the the comment about "Old men with blinders" was obviously not directed towards you, being the pillar of reasoning and enlightenment that carry this forum!
> 
> /ptr


Well as long as you realise that this is so--OK.
Especially from someone with John Ogdon as his avatar and before that Jascha Horrenstein ,whose "old" recordings I would rather listen to than many modern efforts !


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## Ukko (Jun 4, 2010)

moody said:


> Of course they are not better because they are old. It's the performance that counts.


Over 90% of the recordings I like are younger than I am; That has to indicate a lack of prejudice, eh?


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## moody (Nov 5, 2011)

Geo Dude said:


> it seems to me that he was saying that he prefers the new style of performance.


He is a she and gave examples and I answered based on that.


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## moody (Nov 5, 2011)

tempo said:


> Talk about stating opinion as hard fact - who says Karajan's 1963 Beethoven IS remarkable? Entirely subjective - don't state your views as though they are a universal truth that everyone has to agree with.
> 
> And I stand by my previous remarks - compare an old Beethoven cycle to a new one and you'll find _generally _slower tempi. Same goes for many operas and other works.


Karajan's 1963 Beethoven is certainly remarkable and I don't even like it.
Your other points are incorrect but of course I'm sure you can prove them??


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## Geo Dude (May 22, 2013)

moody said:


> He is a she and gave examples and I answered based on that.


That's just it; the examples she gave were about preferring one style of performance to another, not about the quality of sound, hence my somewhat puzzled reaction to your response.


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## moody (Nov 5, 2011)

Geo Dude said:


> That's just it; the examples she gave were about preferring one style of performance to another, not about the quality of sound, hence my somewhat puzzled reaction to your response.


You will recall that the thread is about old recordings being best or not.
I can only presume that her fascinating anecdotes were to prove the old ones were not best---or how do you interpret the post ??
Where does the quality of sound come into this ?


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## Selby (Nov 17, 2012)

moody said:


> It depends whether you are interested in the history behind recordings or not.
> What are you going to do about Rachmaninoff's own recordings, what about Caruso-- do you consign them to the rubbish bin in favour of up to date recordings /


Interesting interpretation of what I posted.

Of course I would not want to see any important historical artifact discarded. This is especially true of music.

But sound quality does remain an issue, you may not care, which you've made clear, but many of us do.

It is music, you listen to it, if there is other noise, it distracts from the music. This is fairly simplistic, are you being contrary just for the fun of it?

I have Rach's performances of his own work, and more recent interpretations, and do not feel the need to choose - although if Rach was around, and forced to choose, I think he would be okay losing his own performance "to the rubbish bin" in favor of Horowitz'.


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## Ingélou (Feb 10, 2013)

Ingenue said:


> Styles change, don't they? I downloaded a YouTube clip of Schumann's 'Traumerei' because I'm practising it at the moment. The older violinist - won't say his name - played with many pauses, milked it for all it was worth, lots of glissando. It was 'too much' for me. I swapped it for a more modern clip, which still had bags of emotion, but didn't 'do it all for you'.
> 
> My granny (born 1889) used to love smooth, sobbing violins, but I like them a bit rougher!
> 
> So for me - admittedly, an ignoramus - the older recordings are not better, even though I'm *getting on a bit*.


Right - points of information.
a) Yes, I am female.
b) Yes, my point was that styles change and that I don't like the older style of violin playing, which to me is too ornate and emotional. I like a plainer approach.
c) Based on that, I answer the OP by saying that I personally don't like older recordings better even though
d) I am in my 60s, and a previous post had suggested that older people prefer older recordings for that reason.

Hope that makes it clear. I like using examples & parables, partly because I don't have enough theoretical knowledge, but also because story-telling is fun and often makes a point more clearly - though maybe not in this case.


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## Geo Dude (May 22, 2013)

moody said:


> You will recall that the thread is about old recordings being best or not.
> I can only presume that her fascinating anecdotes were to prove the old ones were not best---or how do you interpret the post ??
> Where does the quality of sound come into this ?


Sorry about that. I should have gone back and re-read your post before that last reply; I'm tired and a few different streams of argument going on here got mixed up in my head. I was thinking of another post. What puzzled me originally about your response was that her post didn't seem to mention anything about people feeling those recordings were better _because_ they were older, just noting a difference in performance in styles and which she preferred. Were you just agreeing with her that it was about people preferring difference performance styles? I could have misunderstood you.

Also:



moody said:


> Karajan's 1963 Beethoven is certainly remarkable and I don't even like it.
> Your other points are incorrect but of course I'm sure you can prove them??


Thanks for this. I think that a point that gets lost in peoples' frustration with reviewers comparing new recordings they like to older ones the reviewer prefers* is that you can acknowledge the greatness of a recording without necessarily being a fan.

That said, I think that asking him to prove a point about a use of slower tempos in the past will end up being a nowhere road; it's very easy to cherry pick from the fastest or slowest performances of any given period to make a point, in particular when you factor in repeats vs lack of repeats. We would need some kind of a baseline for comparison that's very difficult to achieve.

*I don't think this is as widespread as it's made out to be, though. There are a few reviewers who do this that happen to get attention because their writing style is particularly loud.


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## Cheyenne (Aug 6, 2012)

Mitchell said:


> It is music, you listen to it, if there is other noise, it distracts from the music. This is fairly simplistic, are you being contrary just for the fun of it?


It seems to me he's disagreeing with it simply because it does not matter to him; I care little about recording noise too.


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## moody (Nov 5, 2011)

Mitchell said:


> Interesting interpretation of what I posted.
> 
> Of course I would not want to see any important historical artifact discarded. This is especially true of music.
> 
> ...


I am never contrary for the fun of it and would prefer that you avoid "clever" cracks they don't work with me.
Although it may be beyond your ken people brought up on 78 shellacs don't worry much about a little extra noise'
Also,although I'm a great admirer of Horowitz I think Rachmaninoff is superior,the only performances that I believe compare at all are Earl Wild's.


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## moody (Nov 5, 2011)

Geo Dude said:


> Sorry about that. I should have gone back and re-read your post before that last reply; I'm tired and a few different streams of argument going on here got mixed up in my head. I was thinking of another post. What puzzled me originally about your response was that her post didn't seem to mention anything about people feeling those recordings were better _because_ they were older, just noting a difference in performance in styles and which she preferred. Were you just agreeing with her that it was about people preferring difference performance styles? I could have misunderstood you.
> 
> Also:
> 
> ...


You made an excellent point,a lot of the argument here is pretty wet.
I was agreeing to the extent that a performance on record is not better by virtue of its age.


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## Selby (Nov 17, 2012)

Cheyenne said:


> It seems to me he's disagreeing with it simply because it does not matter to him; I care little about recording noise too.


Point taken. Maybe I'm the one in the minority.


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## bigshot (Nov 22, 2011)

I'm an archivist, so it's my job to know about the past. I provide a reference library to student artists. One of the things I always hear is "There's good and bad in any age. No era is any better than any other." This concept is so self evidently false, it's amazing that it's so widespread. There definitely are golden ages.

In America, we lived through the golden age of artistic popular culture in the first half of the 20th century. To know what we've lost, you just have to open any magazine from the 1930s and flip through it. Even the advertisements are beautiful. Jazz, movies, illustration, design... The advancements made in the popular arts between 1900 and 1950 are astounding.

Today, we are living through the golden age of technology perhaps. But the arts have suffered. There's no denying that.


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## Ukko (Jun 4, 2010)

bigshot said:


> I'm an archivist, so it's my job to know about the past. I provide a reference library to student artists. One of the things I always hear is "There's good and bad in any age. No era is any better than any other." This concept is so self evidently false, it's amazing that it's so widespread. There definitely are golden ages.
> 
> In America, we lived through the golden age of artistic popular culture in the first half of the 20th century. To know what we've lost, you just have to open any magazine from the 1930s and flip through it. Even the advertisements are beautiful. Jazz, movies, illustration, design... The advancements made in the popular arts between 1900 and 1950 are astounding.
> 
> Today, we are living through the golden age of technology perhaps. But the arts have suffered. There's no denying that.


The first half of the 20th C. was a humdinger in music (the other traditional arts I have no real knowledge of). I have a notion, one with very little scientific foundation, that starting around 1970, many young people/artists took up arts with computers as their main tool. Some of those arts didn't exist before. Maybe we need a new understanding of what Art (with the capital A) is.

A corollary is (if the pool of potential artists is stable in number), that the new arts reduced the pool available for the 'traditional' arts.


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## Geo Dude (May 22, 2013)

bigshot said:


> I'm an archivist, so it's my job to know about the past. I provide a reference library to student artists. One of the things I always hear is "There's good and bad in any age. No era is any better than any other." This concept is so self evidently false, it's amazing that it's so widespread. There definitely are golden ages.
> 
> In America, we lived through the golden age of artistic popular culture in the first half of the 20th century. To know what we've lost, you just have to open any magazine from the 1930s and flip through it. Even the advertisements are beautiful. Jazz, movies, illustration, design... The advancements made in the popular arts between 1900 and 1950 are astounding.
> 
> Today, we are living through the golden age of technology perhaps. But the arts have suffered. There's no denying that.


I can't speak for everyone, but I personally have no issue with this and I suspect that this is not what people are taking issue with.



bigshot said:


> There is a thing about older recordings that fans of current recordings don't realize. In the 50s and 60s, there was a crop of conductors brought up through the 20s and 30s when being a conductor meant something totally different than it does today. The concept that a conductor should sublimate himself to the will of the composer didn't exist, or at least it wasn't popular. In that time, the conductor was a supreme interpreter... free to make his own creative mark on the work. The differences in approach between Toscanini and Stokowski were vast and fundamental. When you hear a recording by either one of them, you recognize their leadership immediately.
> 
> Today, the goal is "appropriateness". Everyone wants to be "historically informed" and personal expression is considered "willfulness". It tends to make most performances good, but it pretty much precludes a conductor from hitting the stratospheric heights that Stoki or Toscanini hit.


These comments are the ones the ones that I (and I suspect others) take issue with. I think it's unfair to assume that most fans of current recordings are unaware of the history behind the older generation of conductors, and by extension recordings. I don't doubt that you've had some bad experiences with members unfamiliar with older recordings they criticize, but I don't think it's universal.

I also don't buy into the idea that the overarching goal is "appropriateness" and that conductors (or musicians in chamber ensembles) are constrained by that, at least not as a wholesale truth. My collection is filled with HIP (and PI) recordings and there are a variety of different interpretations, many quite individual; Immerseel's recording of Beethoven's Fifth comes to mind. For that matter, so does Fasolis/I Barocchisti's set of Brandenburg Concertos. Jacobs' Mozart (symphonies and operas) and Minkowski's Mozart and baroque operas also come to mind off the top of my head. If I was to take a look at my collection I could pull out several other examples easily.

That said, the main reason this claim bothers me is because it feels a lot like your complaint about younger listeners stereotyping older recordings that they're not familiar with; in this case the generalization is simply made about newer recordings rather than older ones.


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## Ukko (Jun 4, 2010)

Geo Dude said:


> [...]
> I also don't buy into the idea that the overarching goal is "appropriateness" and that conductors (or musicians in chamber ensembles) are constrained by that, at least not as a wholesale truth. My collection is filled with HIP (and PI) recordings and there are a variety of different interpretations, many quite individual; Immerseel's recording of Beethoven's Fifth comes to mind. For that matter, so does Fasolis/I Barocchisti's set of Brandenburg Concertos. Jacobs' Mozart (symphonies and operas) and Minkowski's Mozart and baroque operas also come to mind off the top of my head. If I was to take a look at my collection I could pull out several other examples easily.
> 
> That said, the main reason this claim bothers me is because it feels a lot like your complaint about younger listeners stereotyping older recordings that they're not familiar with; in this case the generalization is simply made about newer recordings rather than older ones.


The complaints 'feel alike' because they are in a way the two sides of a coin. If _bigshot_ had used the word 'precision' instead of appropriateness, there would be documentation to support his claim. This 'body' of new listeners doesn't like older recordings because neither the sound nor the adherence to period practice (never mind the instruments) is precise. Some older recordings also reveal that players of non-fretted strings were not as pitch-precise, and that concert pianists were comparatively unconcerned about the occasional flub. Some, ah, mature listeners hear period practice as distorting the music they are familiar with (again, never mind the instruments), and the modern focus on precision as conducive to 'safe' performance/interpretation.

:tiphat:


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## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

I believe both performance AND recording quality matters. For me it is difficult to really enjoy a performance if the quality of recording is poor. Mind you, in the case of (say) Horowitz's 1944 Rach 3 with Barbirolli one is glad to just have a record of the performance which is stupendous. However, the appalling recording does not make for easy listening. On the other hand the latest Beethoven set from Chailly has amazing sound but the performances (to me) are too fast for comfort - the music doesn't breathe. 

Unlike some here I think Karajan's 63 Beethoven set IS remarkable. To me it's the best all round although there are better individual performances of some of the symphonies to be found (eg the Kleiber 5&7). I know some get turned off at the very mention of Karajan but that is their problem. To me the 63 (and most of the 77 set) remains a benchmark.


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## Cheyenne (Aug 6, 2012)

Where exactly does one draw the line? This performance is from 1936 and sounds fine to me: 



 I'll deal with the hiss!


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## Ingélou (Feb 10, 2013)

I see what you mean - one can screen out the hiss fairly easily.
Funnily enough, on non-classical records like blues or southern gospel, I find that scratches & hisses seem to add to the ambience!


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## Cheyenne (Aug 6, 2012)

Well, it is chamber music, orchestral music sure loses some detail with bad sound, but this one from wartime Germany is in pretty good shape, and they didn't have the best recording equipment! 



 It's even a live performance.

Sure, great recording quality can be very nice, but I can deal with a lot. Some may find it horrible (and the coughing too), but believe me when I say that it really isn't a problem for me.


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## moody (Nov 5, 2011)

Cheyenne said:


> Where exactly does one draw the line? This performance is from 1936 and sounds fine to me:
> 
> 
> 
> I'll deal with the hiss!


There is no line,some of my operatic items are from 1902.
It depends what you want to hear and why.
As for refurbishing the old recordings some are done wonderfully and of course Bigshot is an expert in this art and he's right here.


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## moody (Nov 5, 2011)

Cheyenne said:


> Well, it is chamber music, orchestral music sure loses some detail with bad sound, but this one from wartime Germany is in pretty good shape, and they didn't have the best recording equipment!
> 
> 
> 
> ...


Actually they did have the best and had invented magnetic tape and were using it before anyone else. They were making stereo recordings as well.


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## Geo Dude (May 22, 2013)

Hilltroll72 said:


> The complaints 'feel alike' because they are in a way the two sides of a coin. If _bigshot_ had used the word 'precision' instead of appropriateness, there would be documentation to support his claim. This 'body' of new listeners doesn't like older recordings because neither the sound nor the adherence to period practice (never mind the instruments) is precise. Some older recordings also reveal that players of non-fretted strings were not as pitch-precise, and that concert pianists were comparatively unconcerned about the occasional flub. Some, ah, mature listeners hear period practice as distorting the music they are familiar with (again, never mind the instruments), and the modern focus on precision as conducive to 'safe' performance/interpretation.
> 
> :tiphat:


And I think that you have just summarized the entire thread in one post, thank you!


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## bigshot (Nov 22, 2011)

Geo Dude said:


> I think it's unfair to assume that most fans of current recordings are unaware of the history behind the older generation of conductors, and by extension recordings. I don't doubt that you've had some bad experiences with members unfamiliar with older recordings they criticize, but I don't think it's universal.


I don't think people who mostly listen to recent recordings know very much at all about performance practices of the 20s and 30s. I thought it was interesting that someone in this thread referred to Bohm, Karajan and Wand as "old conductors". Those conductors were in their prime in the 60s through 80s. They don't represent "old school" conducting at all. They represent that big band "Berlin/Vienna approach" which continues today.

When I talk about conductors being "supreme interpreters", I'm speaking of conductors like Toscanini and Stokowski who were at their prime in the 1920s and 30s. I'm betting that fans of current recordings know almost nothing about this kind of conducting. It's a totally different approach from anything today. The same is true of Caruso and Heifetz at his peak.

I really think what we're talking about actually has nothing to do with performance, and everything to do with whether the CD says DDD on the label.


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## bigshot (Nov 22, 2011)

Hilltroll72 said:


> This 'body' of new listeners doesn't like older recordings because neither the sound nor the adherence to period practice (never mind the instruments) is precise. Some older recordings also reveal that players of non-fretted strings were not as pitch-precise, and that concert pianists were comparatively unconcerned about the occasional flub. Some, ah, mature listeners hear period practice as distorting the music they are familiar with (again, never mind the instruments), and the modern focus on precision as conducive to 'safe' performance/interpretation.


My point was more about creative freedom than technical issues actually. Conductors were allowed to rearrange things, freely interpret tempo and phrasing, manipulate dynamics for emotional effects... all the things we call "distortions" now. They considered each performance to be a new start for a work. If it didn't work, they were free to dust themselves off and reinterpet at the next performance. It was all based on spontaneous live performance and experimentation. The conductor was as important as the composer.

Today, recording technology has brought the opportunity for perfection. Punching in to fix bad notes, fixing a "perfect" performance in a permanent recording that exists for all time. These weren't considerations before.

We've gained technical perfection and performances that have all the rough edges smoothed off. But now there isn't as much spontaneity or variety. The expression is more under control.

In creative matters, I always opt for freedom, even at the expense of perfection. Art shouldn't be perfect. It should be a personal expression.


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## Geo Dude (May 22, 2013)

bigshot said:


> I really think what we're talking about actually has nothing to do with performance, and everything to do with whether the CD says DDD on the label.


This may be the case, but I would still hesitate to apply the generalization across the board. That said, I would agree if you were to say that people who are raised on DDD recordings would have a difficult time listening to recordings from, say, the 1930s or before.

Forgive me if I sound defensive here, but I will note that DDD is not as important to me personally as smaller orchestras or period instruments, or (in particular in chamber music) more limited use of vibrato, to give a few examples. Ornamentation where appropriate is also appreciated. Something tells me that we agree on that last one if nothing else. 

By the way, you are completely right that interpreting older performances as slower across the board is off base*, as well as grouping Karajan in with early Toscanini and Stokowski and I won't argue those points. I do feel that the same fallacy applies to grouping together the 'modern' style together, though.

*A great example of this is some recordings by Rene Leibowitz and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra; he certainly picked up the tempo when he wanted to and I liked his interpretations, unfortunately I couldn't bring myself to like the large orchestra that was typical of the time.

In the interest of full disclosure I'll note that you are entirely correct in my case about my not being familiar with 20s-30s Stokowski or Toscanini prior to his change in conducting philosophy. My knowledge of early recordings is limited primarily to Caruso and Rachmaninoff conducting and playing his own music. For what it's worth, I think that many people who are familiar with the mid-century Big Band style are not particularly familiar with recordings from that era, either. (Not that you said otherwise.) My classical 'education' began with recommendations from people who loved that era and most seemed to remain thoroughly ensconced in the '40s-'70s, convinced that that era was *the* golden age.


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## bigshot (Nov 22, 2011)

There's a lot more to art than just the times we happen to inhabit. Anyone who limits themselves to their own era is making a huge mistake. It's important for me to note that although I am championing golden age conductors, I have plenty of recent HIP recordings in my collection as well. I probably have a lot more HIP than HIP people have golden age.

My main objection to modern conducting style has less to do with the style itself than it does the homogeneity of it. I wish there were more alternatives. It seems to me once you get a certain type of performance of a certain piece on CD, you don't need another recording of it until you can come up with a new approach. But all I hear are the same basic approach with just minor differences being recorded over and over. It's kind of like playing a video game. You make the exact same basic moves every time. The way you tell a good performance from a bad one is how many moves were performed properly.


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