RECORDING TECHNOLOGY: SHOCKING NEWS

22 APRIL, 2011
After many years of unsuccessful efforts, the researchers at IRCAM (Institut de Recherche et Coordination Acoustique/Musique) finally identified the set of giant pillows through which the celebrated sound engineer Tony Faulkner recorded many CDs for the Hyperion label.  The news of this amazing discovery spread like wildfire through the world of classical record labels.
     Said Dr. Gunther Editmann of Deutsche Grammophon: "We tried for years to duplicate that uniquely muffled, fuzzy, and disembodied sound for which Mr Faulkner is so famous.  Alas, no matter how hard we tried, our recordings still made the instruments sound somewhat similar to what they sound like in real life.  Now, thanks to the brilliant scientists at IRCAM, we can finally guarantee that the sounds on our recordings will bear no resemblance whatsoever to any musical instrument you may encounter in the concert hall."
     Dr. Editmann's enthusiasm was echoed by Nick Splicer of EMI Classics: "It is not only our new recordings, but also our extensive catalog of historical treasures that will benefit from Tony Faulkner's "pillow sound" technology.  For example, in our many previous remasterings of Schnabel's Beethoven sonatas we used tons of filtering, re-equalization, dynamic compression, and other radical sound-altering methods.  Yet despite our best efforts, one could still tell that Schnabel was playing the piano.  With the new pillow-sound remastering no one will be sure about that anymore - just as no one is quite sure about the instruments played on Hyperion recordings."
     Although Mr. Faulkner declined to comment, there are persistent industry rumors that he is trying to stay ahead of the competition by testing new materials through which to record music, including mattresses, rubber flotation devices, and heavy-duty thermal insulation.

Jonathan Leshnoff: "Double Concerto" for Violin and Viola

Now I have a pretty good idea of what it's like for people with Tourette syndrome.  Even with my affection for strong language, I cannot repeat here the long string of obscenities which kept exploding in my mind as I was listening to Leshnoff's Double Concerto (a concert recording by the Columbus SO).  This is not eclecticism, not even pandering.  This is musical grave robbing, pure and simple.  The long-dead but easily identifiable victims of Leshnoff's larcenous efforts include Barber, Shostakovich, and even Khachaturian.  I can't believe I am saying this, but the schlocky Piano Concerto by John Corigliano - which I maligned in an earlier post - sounds like an original and challenging piece by comparison!

In a world ruled by reason, the only reward for such musically felonious activities would consist of a few sharp smacks on the head with a rolled-up score.  But in our music world, the rewards include commissions from (and performances by) major organizations, a series of recordings on a well-known classical label, and a steady flow of saccharine praise from music critics.

John Corigliano's Piano Concerto

Listening to a recent live recording of Corigliano's Piano Concerto (brilliantly played by John Lee with the Cleveland Inst of Music Orchestra under Sasha Makila), it took me only a few minutes to guess the "compositional" recipe behind this piece:

Start with one cup of Prokofiev (for the motoric piano part), add two table spoons of Copland (for a few pseudo-folksy themes), sprinkle with some Stravinskian rhythmic angularity (when you run out of whatever little you had to say thematically and harmonically), and then screw-up a few intervals here and there to create just a little bit of dissonance.
    Of course, the final product will have not one ounce of originality, but we can try to mask that by writing a politically and ideologically tailored program to explain the "inner meaning" of the work - say, as "A concerned artist's response to global warming".
    Alas, many concertgoers do not read programs, so a politically and ideologically appropriate short dedication to go with the work's title - say, "In Memory of the Victims of Nagasaki" -  will add some gravitas, and hopefully also will mask the stale musical odor.  (But never a dedication to the memory of those hundreds of thousands of American boys whose corpses littered the Pacific Rim islands.  That would smack of glorifying American Imperialism!  Nor will we ever dedicate any work to the memory of those many millions of innocent people murdered by the communist regimes - because Gergiev and Lang Lang will never touch a work with this kind of dedication.)

 So get busy with putting ink on paper, or the competition (Danielpour and Higdon) will get their "product" to the Pulitzer committee before you do!