Nicolas McGegan is
capable of astonishing feats of music-making.
His Hungaroton recording of Telemann’s
opera Der Geduldige Socrate
(tragically out of print) is one of
the finest recordings of anything ever
done, certainly one of the outstanding
opera recordings of the twentieth century.
Alessandro Scarlatti
at his best achieves that ecstatic,
thrilling energy in the high Baroque
style that Bach achieved in parts of
his b minor Mass; and this music,
even in the very first number, Dixit
Dominus, is among Scarlatti’s very
best. The elaborate almost delirious
contrapuntal choruses and their dialogue
with the soloists is truly exhilarating.
Scarlatti, like Bach and practically
no-one else, could create a musical
edifice by weaving two — or three —
independent, seemingly unrelated, melodic
lines together; indeed Scarlatti was
more daring than Bach at times. When
one of them is a voice and one an instrument,
the effect is stunning, especially when
they play in extremely close harmony
at the extremes of their range.* This
performance is everything one could
ask for, the chorus is precise and full
of life, the soloists sing tunefully,
accurately and with commitment. The
energy of the music is so high level
I found I couldn’t listen to the whole
concert at one sitting, but needed to
rest a day in between halves. The brief
antiphons are welcome, but do not work
out so well as a would a full slow movement
between high energy allegro movements,
as in, say, the three movement Vivaldi
concerto form. And, this music which
reaches forward as well as back to mix
high Baroque and Gregorian chant shows
us that Scarlatti, at least as much
as Bach, deserves to be acknowledged
a transitional composer, makes Bach
sound very "Classical," even
a bit stodgy, by comparison.
Recording is accurate
giving full definition to soloists against
each other and each against the chorus,
in the SACD surround tracks both side
to side and in depth, with all musicians
in the front of the hall, the chorus
behind the soloists.
This is a live recording,
and contains a few moments where a soloist
might have sounded a little better given
a second chance in the studio with a
good editor, but here it is as it was.
Audience noise is all but non-existent
except for applause before intermission
and at the end.
We are now coming to
a situation of incompatibility between
two systems of surround sound. The familiar
one we know from recordings of films,
where there are three front channels
— right, left, and centre — and two
or three rear channels — right, left,
and perhaps centre as well — has been
joined by another system which is often
now used for classical music recordings
(e.g., DG and, apparently, Avie). This
system is: centre front, and right side
front and side, and left side front
and side, where the side speakers are
placed at or just slightly behind the
listening position. This recording sounds
to me as though it is mixed in the side
speaker surround system. This system
is more practical for small listening
rooms, or rooms where the listening
position is a sofa placed against a
wall of the room, and was indeed recommended
as long ago as the 1970s for listening
to SQ quadraphonic disks. Surround sound
recordings mixed for side placement
of surround channel speakers do not
sound as realistic when played back
with rear placement of surround channel
speakers. Packages should be marked
as to which speaker placement is recommended,
and perhaps there will be double issues
of the same recordings in both systems.
It isn’t reasonable for recording companies
to expect people to move their surround
speakers to different positions from
recording to recording, or to switch
between two separate systems, that is
a total of eight speakers, two of which
are disconnected all the time. Some
modern and classic sound sources (e.g.,
my new Sony DVP NS 755V DVD player,
and my classic Aphex Systems AVM 8000
processor from the 1970s) can be adjusted
so as to create virtual extra speakers
and allow the use of more than six channels
all the time; presumably these systems
accomplish the shift from one system
to the other automatically. A practical
compromise for persons such as myself
who have a rear arrangement of surround
channel speakers is to disable the rear
centre channel, if any, and move the
listening chair back against the wall
so the rear speakers are indeed nearly
beside us. Ideally this should also
include readjustment of the speaker
distance settings in the sound source
equipment.
Another approach would
be to listen to the 2.0 channel SACD
tracks through a fake surround sound
processor, and this might give you the
best sound with your system; you will
have a pleasant surround sound ambience,
but with no depth definition in the
ensemble sound.
This is a beautiful
recording in every way, no matter how
you listen, and since there is no actual
musical information in the surround
channels, only ambient information,
it is worth a little fiddling with things
to get it to sound its best with your
equipment.
*Handel learned a lot
from Scarlatti, and turned this trick
only once that I know of, in his Ode
for St. Cecilias’s Day.
Paul Shoemaker
see also review
by Robert Hugill
The following
response has been received:
I am familiar only with the standard
"ITU Recommendation 775" 5.1
speaker
placement. This specifies a centre speaker
position of 0 degrees, front
left and front right speaker position
of -30/+30 degrees, and left and
right surround speaker position at -110/+110
degrees. This was the layout
used for mixing and mastering in surround.
Both the mastering engineer and
I felt that a higher level of surround
channels did not contribute
positively to the sound image (from
the mix position). No LFE signal was
included, as there was only one "16
foot" instrument in the ensemble
(string bass), and the church acoustic
was boomy as it was.
As stated in my production notes, the
front three microphones in the
surround array were placed equidistantly.
However, instead of placing the
surround microphones in an equidistantly
to them (i.e., a pentagon array),
I separated them by twice that distance
(for more spatial separation). I
used a semi-coincident pair of cardioid
microphones in the church for the
surround channels, this was angled at
the requisite +110/-110 degrees.
I can only suggest that listeners add
or subtract level on surround
channels to their taste. Each recording
presents its own challenges of
repertoire and acoustic and ideally
is approached on those terms alone.
To
my knowledge most DG and Avie projects
are produced by different
producer/engineer/mastering teams, all
with different sets of ears.
Therefore it is difficult at best to
assert that all DG and Avie releases
employ a "side" surround speaker
position in preference to the ITU
Recommendation 775 standard.
- David v.R. Bowles
producer and engineer, Avie AV 0048