Lockdown Listening with Kira Doherty

“But when we choose to listen to live recordings over studio recordings, what are we listening to and why?”

As a horn player, my life as a musician has been fettered by an ever-present concern with accuracy. Many refer to it as the instrument most difficult to play accurately on, and because of this, technical precision is an issue that is never far from my mind. Although this preoccupation with accuracy is something common to most, if not all horn players, it is also something that all orchestral musicians wrestle with to a greater or lesser degree. As a musician and performer, there is so often a negotiation one has to conduct onstage between safety and risk, control and release, performance and perfection.

Over the last year of lockdowns, I’ve begun to reflect on the act of listening in an isolated environment, and what it means in a time where live performance can only be enjoyed through the veil of internet streaming and archive recordings. In a way, we are luckier than ever, as the growing popularity of live recordings over the last decade has meant that we are awash with live performances to enjoy from the comfort of our own homes.

But when we choose to listen to live recordings over studio recordings, what are we listening to and why? By their nature, live recordings will be flawed: they are generally made up of long, single takes that cannot be manipulated into perfection by sound engineers. But does this mean that they are less desirable than the more ‘perfect’ studio recordings?

Beethoven is often quoted as having said ‘to play a wrong note is insignificant; to play without passion is inexcusable’, yet telling that to the principal cellist about to perform the solo from the William Tell overture might not illicit the warmest of responses. Live recording is such a peculiar and peculiarly challenging thing for classical musicians both mentally and technically, precisely because of that tension between performance and perfection. So why do we bother with these live recordings? What is the point of immortalising something that is not ‘perfect’?

“…they wanted a recording which bore witness to the musical event itself.”

In May, 1965, one of the world’s greatest pianists Vladimir Horowitz stepped out onto the stage of Carnegie hall in what was one of New York’s most hotly anticipated musical events, and one that he had agreed to record live for Sony Music. After receiving an enthusiastic applause from the audience, Horowitz sat down at the piano ready to perform in public for the first time in over a decade. What came next was the opening bar of Bach’s Toccata, Adagio and Fugue in C major… but with the conspicuous dissonance of a very wrong note. Perhaps there was a sharp intake of breath from the audience, surely a few winces. As performers, we’ve all been there. A wrong note in the right place, or a right note in the wrong place… whatever it is, it will be immortalised for us to mull over and reflect upon ad infinitum.

As for Horowitz’s concert, the mistakes didn’t end there: the end of the second movement of the Schumann Fantasie also went quite noticeably wrong, and there were a few other mishaps as well that were subsequently edited out by Sony for the release, something they were later criticised for. Interestingly, as a result of this criticism Sony decided to re-release the album completely unedited. The fact that there was so much pressure for them to do so is fascinating in and of itself: the listeners wanted the concert unedited, warts and all; they didn’t want a perfect recording, they wanted a recording which bore witness to the musical event itself.

By using the example of the 1965 Carnegie concert, my point is not to highlight Horowitz’s momentary shortcomings in order to prove that no one is perfect, but rather to make us think about what ‘perfect’ means to us as listeners and as musicians, and why it doesn’t matter as much as we might think it does.

“In music just as in other forms of art, perfection is an idea that can run counter to the fundamental truths of beauty.”

I first heard this live recording of Casals while I was studying for my undergraduate degree at the Conservatoire de Musique de Montréal. A friend of mine had been extolling the virtues of this incredible cello player that I had not yet heard, and it finally came time to sit down and have a listen. As soon as he put the recording on, I was transfixed… not with awe though, but with confusion: the cello came across as scratchy and resiny; there were grumbles and huffs from Casals, and the occasional note didn’t sit where it should or didn’t quite speak. Having only listened the studio-perfect recordings of Yo-Yo Ma, I was perplexed as to why one would find this recording not only desirable, but a pinnacle of artistic integrity. However, that recording of Casals taught me an invaluable lesson: it made me realise that up until then, I had been using technical perfection as the ultimate gauge of quality, and because of this, I hadn’t been able to hear what these artists were really saying.

The point I’m getting at is that the idea of perfection (technical or otherwise) perhaps isn’t something we should be imposing on music when we are listening to it, mostly because it’s not particularly relevant. There is a fundamental problem with the concept of perfection, which is that once it has been attained, there is logically nowhere else to go. In music just as in other forms of art, perfection is an idea that can run counter to the fundamental truths of beauty. Yes, there is a limit to the amount of mistakes a musical performance can sustain before the message and emotion of a piece gets irretrievably obscured, but that for the most part is a rare occurrence. Let’s face it, if perfection was the point of music, we would all have given up performing live years ago and retreated to the recording studio.

There is a reason why we are perpetually drawn to live performance and why it continues to be so vitally important both to performers and to listeners. The communication that happens between musicians and audience during a live performance is so utterly central to how we experience music, and what ultimately makes us human: there is simply no other medium of listening that is able to be replicate it.

“…I had been using technical perfection as the ultimate gauge of quality, and because of this, I hadn’t been able to hear what these artists were really saying.”

For my last piece, I’ve chosen something a bit closer to home. In 2015 and 2016, the Philharmonia recorded the three Rachmaninoff Symphonies live for Signum Classics conducted by another world famous pianist and conductor whose sudden retirement from the concert platform was announced last year. Vladimir Ashkenazy holds a central and distinguished place in the annals of classical music, and is much loved by the Philharmonia. His musical integrity coupled with his unique conducting style lends extra levels of energy and awareness to these performances, and for a listener, they come as close to capturing the feeling of being in the hall as you can get. In them, you can make out that unmistakable link between orchestra and audience that makes the live performances of the Philharmonia so special. They are not perfect. But they are real, and they are joyous.