We want first to thank Tracy Killeen of Troy Chromatic Concerts, and Dr. Dan Berkenblit of the Union chamber series, for allowing us to record and photograph their concerts. At a time of increasing cultural philistinism, their dedication to quality without compromise has proved to be financially as well as artistically successful. Second, we want to thank Aaron Heller for the loan of his Calrec Soundfield stereo microphone, which we are currently using for these concerts. Aaron was DD's mentor at WRPI during that station's second golden age, 1983-89, when we digitally recorded over 200 concerts, including about 40 at the Music Hall.
We believe that single-point stereo microphoning is the only way to properly and honestly record classical music, especially in such locations as Troy Savings Bank Music Hall and the Union College Memorial Chapel. Spaced omnidirectional microphoning, however big and sexy it sounds at first, is little more than the sonic equivalent of soft-focus photography: Everything is surrounded in haze, so you really can't hear the "soundstage" accurately. Spaced-omni recording is THE politically correct dogma for recording classical music in the United States. But it's useless if you want to hear music with absolute clarity, and naturalness of balance and imaging. That's why the Soundfield microphone is so impressive -- it reproduces the actual performance stage with complete honesty. Accuracy is our sonic agenda.
Many of the snapshots here are just that, snapshots taken on a digital camera, or by Bob Oldendorf, John, Tracy, or myself on 35mm film stock. We can't compose every shot as perfectly as possible, because we must also set up recording equipment, and the recordings come first.
Most of our recordings are made not only for the local presenters, but also for NPR's Performance Today program, which has carried DD's recordings on ninety occasions effective March 19, 2002. They are also being recorded for local broadcast on WMHT-FM
's No Ticket Required series. We realize that WMHT does not offer RealAudio capability at this time. If and when it does, we will link to it here.
Please feel free to e-mail us with your comments. Our intention to create an unofficial WRPI web site is now on hold. But if we ever get it off the ground, it will contain photographs from our collections; thoughts and analysis on the marriage of technology and music, and on the state of "Werpie"; and plenty of musings by DD on classical music and classical broadcasting. We are learning how to create a web site, so some of this may appear amateurish. Please bear with us as we improve over time.
in the Capital District. Come back again! |
|
The 101st season of Troy Chromatic Concerts ended with a first-class
chamber concert by the Maria Bachmann/Jon Klibonoff/Semyon Fridman piano
trio, on Friday, April 24th.
Maria Bachmann will be known to some readers as the violinist who has
championed contemporary music on the BMG/Catalyst label. That's definitely
how I remember her, as we played her CDs at WRPI when I was their classical
music director. And since the name Bachmann is familiar to Toscanini
addicts, I asked her, at the post-concert reception, if she was related
to Edwin Bachmann, the former principal second violin of the NBC Symphony
Orchestra. "Many people ask me that. No, I'm not," she replied. She said,
among other things, that her Catalyst CDs were her only ones for the label,
which apparently is now defunct. Also, she is married to the head of Pegasus,
which I recall is a website-construction firm for performing arts
organizations. She brought up her brand-new Sony D-8 portable DAT, which we
connected directly to one of the headphone outputs of the Calrec, and she got
a master of the concert on the spot!
I don't know much about Semyon Fridman or Jon Klibonoff, but suffice it to
say they are superb musicians, and it was great chatting with them at the
post-concert reception. They posed for pictures, and here's a few.
As for their performances, this was our second Beethoven Archduke this
season. The "Three Ladies" did this at the Union Chamber Summit on March
16th, so it was instructive to hear the slightly different interpretation
this time, a little more reflective and introspective, not quite as gutsy and
dynamic as the earlier one, but excellent on its own.
As for the Turina and Mendelssohn Piano Trios (both Number 2s), they were
outstanding: Full of passion and energy and intensity, the Mendelssohn
especially. Fortunately, they were kind enough to allow us to post a portion
of this concert on Aaron Heller's Streaming Audio page, where at some future
date, you'll hear the last two movements of the Mendelssohn.
We feel that the reproduction is also excellent -- close, clear, brilliant
and properly balanced. Fortunately, Jon kept the piano in the center of the
stage, so it sounds evenly distributed from left-to-right in the stereo
soundstage. We hope they OK the tape for Performance Today, but let's not
push our luck! Seven times in six weeks is plenty.
Here are some additional pix taken on the 24th: John outside the Troy
Savings Bank Building. Don, also outside, looking more and more like Jackie
Gleason. (When WILL he stop eating all that junkfood?) The top floor is now a
little brighter because we're on daylight time, so you can see everything
better.
Some new personalities to introduce: Elisa Barney-Smith, Germanophile par
excellence and PhD candidate at The 'Tute (her office is one floor below JS's
in the JEC building), helped us out for the second time this season. Here
are two of the stagehands, Roger Snyder and Todd Langston. (No Dick Regnier
yet! Maybe next year.) And here's Tracy Killeen with the page turner of the
evening, Jennifer Angerosa. She's a senior at Union College who hopes to
become a veterinarian. Good luck Jennifer!
Well, that's it. Our final report from Troy Savings Bank Music Hall for
the 1997-98 Chromatics season. We hope you have had as much fun reading
these chronicles and seeing the snapshots as we've had taking them. And as
we said, check the Aaron Heller Streaming Audio Page for a portion of this
concert, in MP-3 encoding, somewhere down the road. They gave us the
go-ahead!
|
Capital District chamber aficianados were given a notable treat last Monday
and Tuesday, with back-to-back concerts by some of the most exciting younger
musicians active today. It was another example of heads-up, outstanding
programming by the Schenectady Museum/Union College International Festival of
Chamber Music.
The summit began on Monday night with the tenth series appearance of the
Pamela Frank/Yeesun Kim/Wu Han piano trio. Pam Frank has
distinguished
herself in performances with major orchestras, including the Boston Symphony at Tanglewood last summer. She will soon
premiere a new violin concerto by Ellen Taafe Zwilich, with the New York
Philharmonic. Yeesun Kim is the cellist of the Borromeo String Quartet, which gave two superb concerts at the Chapel earlier this season (one of them approved for airplay, the other awaiting approval). Wu Han -- who played the Chapel just two months ago with her husband, cellist David Finckel -- is a former Performance Today artist-in-residence. Next season, she'll present her first solo piano recital at the Chapel.
The following night, one of the musical world's most celebrated pianists,
Mitsuko Uchida, made a rare chamber music appearance in an all-Mozart
program. She was joined by Mark Steinberg, first violinist of the Brentano
Quartet; and Peter Stumpf, assistant principal cellist of the Philadelphia
Orchestra. Obviously, this would have been a notable event, no matter what
the program was. That they did three piano trios of Mozart -- not
frequently played individually, let alone together -- was a singularly
courageous act of programming. Here they are, after the concert, left-to-right, Stumpf, Steinberg and Uchida. After what we hope was a good night's rest and a safe journey, the trio took this program to Philadelphia. We weren't allowed to record the second concert, possibly because it was
the first "tryout" of this program before the Philly gig. However, we
did tape the previous night.
Uchida and her colleagues arrived at the Chapel during the intermission of
the Monday night concert, and they listened to "the girls" (as Dan B. calls
them) perform Beethoven's Archduke Trio. After the program, Uchida and her favorite piano technician, Aleks Markovich, went straight to work on the piano. She played for a while, and then wrote down what she wanted done. At 9:30 the next morning, Alex was there, perking it up according to her recommendations. JS and I arrived at 4 PM, and took a bunch of photographs in the Chapel while it was still pretty bright outside. Then we tore down the recording setup. After a leisurely dinner at the Union Campus Center -- taller, brighter and cheerier than RPI's drab, dirty old Student Union -- we went to different locations in the Chapel, relaxed, and enjoyed ourselves as concertgoers rather than recording engineers.
This was a piano season for the Union series, and, sadly, four of our concert tapes were marred by major piano tuning and tech
problems. Indeed, the Boris Berezovsky tape (approved by the artist
nevertheless) was rejected by Performance Today due to those problems.
In anticipation of this summit, a Steinway piano technician was engaged to
partially recondition the piano back in December, and returned for these two concert dates. His name is Aleksandr Markovich. In addition to being a Steinway concert technician, Aleks is
also Uchida's personal favorite, and has worked with her for many years.
So, it was essential that he be brought back for this extravaganza.
We won't cover all the details of what's happened to the Union Chapel
piano over the years, it is too painful to recount. When I talked to Uchida after her
concert, she replied, "What are they doing? They're ruining pianos all over
the country!"
When Aleks worked on the piano for a week in December 1997, it sounded great in our recording of an
all-Brahms program with the Borromeo Quartet and pianist Stephen Prutsman.
In the weeks that followed, however, local tuners made changes that
largely undid Aleks's work. So it was good to have him back for these two programs.
This piano (serial number 277140 ) is nearly seventy years old (1933). One problem is that the soundboard is cracked in at least two places. Moreover, the tuning doesn't hold, possibly because Yamaha parts were installed for the reconditioning of this piano when it was purchased some years back. Aleks had to hammer the pins down in order to keep the exact pitch. "The piano is not holding the tuning, so I have to do something a little more drastic". . The damper system and action frames are messed up too. Not to mention what was done to the
instrument after Aleks worked on it in December.
I also asked Aleks to describe what the differences are between the American
and Hamburg Steinways. In our recent piano recordings with the Soundfield, I have wondered why the sound still lacks the sparkle I've
heard in other piano recordings, and in live concerts -- notably, the
Maurizio Pollini Beethoven sonata cycle at Carnegie Hall in 1995-96. At that
series, Pollini had exactly the bright, ringing sound that I have heard and
usually loved in piano recordings. Aleks said that Pollini plays the Hamburg
Steinway, not the American. The differences have to do with different
materials and design: The Hamburg has "more overtones" that give it a
ringing, brighter sound. The soundboards are made of different types of
wood. The Hamburg is more finicky, requires more frequent tuning, and is less
touch-sensitive than the American. The domestic Steinway is more stable and
robust, and in concerto performances, it can cut through the orchestral part
more cleanly than the import. I gather that Alex prefers the domestic
piano, but there are pianists who prefer the latter, notably, Grigory
Sokolov, who will play at Union on Saturday, May 16th.
At last, this provided an explanation for the sonic differences I have heard
in these pianos over the years. That may account for the sound we have
obtained with the Calrec -- it may not be the mike after all, but the darker
sound of the American Steinway itself. This mike tells no lies!!!
Now, a few more shots inside and outside
the Chapel. Here are two views from upstairs
, the first of which shows the installed eye hooks
for the ropes. This one shows the mike in relation to the
piano, and also a better look at how the stage floor opens into the hall.
Here's JS, at the same position as in the previous photo,
and you can see the eye hooks on the other side, measured out to within an
inch of each other on both sides. Now here's two shots from the recording booth, the second showing JS's brand-new Sony MZ-R50 MiniDisc portable recorder. In initial uses it has sounded
extremely fine -- certainly as good as a great FM broadcast, better than
cassettes, and perhaps as great as CDs. (We did a bake-off, and our results are posted below.)
Here are some easy-to-see shots of the mike in the shock mount and mike
mount, minus the foam wedges we always insert now. Here's some shots of the
cabling and ropes, and the ropes fed down the side back to the booth. {insert
these when you've loaded them on the TIFF dump, and add two of the mike tiffs
that are bright -- it's your call as to where you want, I don't care}
Finally, a long shot from outside the Chapel on Tuesday, at roughly 4:40 PM. It's views like this,
and one of the Nott Memorial, that make one appreciate the
role architectural beauty and elegance play in marrying tradition, history and educational excellence.
All in all, as you see from the many photos we took, the summit was
interesting and exciting, not just for the splendid music-making, but also to
hear, finally, the Union Chapel piano sound its very best -- a tribute to
Uchida, and to her favorite piano technician, Aleks Markovich.