# The "magic" of live recordings



## brianwalker (Dec 9, 2011)

true rubato comes to life only the in the moment

There's a lot of live recording bias in the nominations of greatest recordings ever. Live recordings are usually considered, ceteris paribus, superior to studio recordings. They're described as more "spontaneous", "flexible", "exuberant", in short, just plain better.

I don't deny this. My favorite conductor, the redoubtable Knappertsbusch, was notorious for eschewing the studio and preparation in general (read: he doesn't rehearse, essentially), preferring not to rehearse and didn't have a rigid interpretation beforehand. Kenneth Wood has a brief comment on this on his blog:

The funny thing about the Tristan Prelude is that the first 12 and last 20 bars or so are unbelievably difficult, even though very little seems to happen. The rest of the piece, however, sort of plays itself, as long as the conductor has a bit of mojo going. I take Wagner at his word in this music, conducting with a lot of elasticity of tempo, but that makes the music hard to rehearse. Somehow, true rubato comes to life only the in the moment- what worked last time doesn't work this time. As a result, you have to use the rehearsals to build flexibility, not to drill in a pre-determined pattern of speed ups and slow downs. It can be exhausing, as it needs more of a performance level of energy and creativity than a rehearsal one.

Can a musician care to explain this more in detail? Why can't the "spontaneous" aspects of live performances be planned?


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## tdc (Jan 17, 2011)

I don't know if this can fully answer your question, (as far as the idea of non-rehearsal being beneficial) but part of the magic of live performance can perhaps be explained by the theory of _Social Facilitation_.

"This theory suggests that the mere or imagined presence of people in social situations creates an atmosphere of evaluation. Yerkes Dodson's Law Theory of Social Facilitation states that in this atmosphere, "the mere presence of other people will enhance the performance in speed and accuracy of well-practiced tasks, but will degrade the performance of less familiar tasks."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_facilitation


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## Krisena (Jul 21, 2012)

tdc said:


> I don't know if this can fully answer your question, (as far as the idea of non-rehearsal being beneficial) but part of the magic of live performance can perhaps be explained by the theory of _Social Facilitation_.
> 
> "This theory suggests that the mere or imagined presence of people in social situations creates an atmosphere of evaluation. Yerkes Dodson's Law Theory of Social Facilitation states that in this atmosphere, "the mere presence of other people will enhance the performance in speed and accuracy of well-practiced tasks, but will degrade the performance of less familiar tasks."
> 
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_facilitation


Yeah, this! The excitement and adrenaline you get when performing for an audience will take you to new heights you didn't know existed before.

I think good examples of live magic is Akiko Suwanai's recording of the Tchaikovsky's violin concert OR Joshua Bell playing the same piece at the 2010 Nobel Price Concert.


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## KRoad (Jun 1, 2012)

The level of performance may be more inspired/higher for reasons noted above, but this can be at the expense of the quality of the recording itself - the studio being a more controllable sound environment. Swings and roundabouts?


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## moody (Nov 5, 2011)

KRoad said:


> The level of performance may be more inspired/higher for reasons noted above, but this can be at the expense of the quality of the recording itself - the studio being a more controllable sound environment. Swings and roundabouts?


No ,live recordings are always preferable.This means you almost become part of a real audience and see through their ears and eyes a performance unfolding. I don't care about the lack of hi-fidelity, this is music as it should be heard!


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## bigshot (Nov 22, 2011)

Performance quality always trumps recording quality. I have a little stack of crappy audiophile demonstration CDs that prove it. Who cares if the bass drum goes boom if the conductor is a dud?


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