SQ or performance?

In classical music, how much does the sound quality influence your enjoyment of a particular piece? I find it plays a large part. A recording is an artifact in itself. There are many factors which contribute to the final product. And even a great performance can be sabotaged by poor engineering, poor pressing, poor microphone placement and the like. Conversely, a mediocre performance can be attractive to us because of sterling acoustics.
In “historical” recordings we may allow for bad sound, but in contemporary performances the sound can have a significant bearing on our perspective.
Also, our appreciation of a given performance can be affected by other factors. For example, if we grew up loving a certain version, all others may suffer by comparison in our view.

rvpiano04-12-2022 6:13pm

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mahgister Details Discussions Posts This discussion Message User 13,192 posts 04-13-2022 at 04:18am Copy Comment URL Report Comment Edit Delete But sometimes it is difficult to choose between marmorean perfection with Moravec and an elegant more moving interpretation which is not less powerful and way less known... Even if the sound recording cannot rival Moravec album it is very good...Anyway very rare pianist can rival Brunhoff delicate intonation without any rigidity, a flowing heartfelt singing and dancing....
mahgister Details Discussions Posts This discussion Message User 13,192 posts 04-13-2022 at 04:28am Copy Comment URL Report Comment Edit Delete Same here impossible to choose between the well recorded Barbosa compared to Flier but the two versions are stupendously good and so different that listening one and the other is doubling pleasure....And most dont know these two geniuses...
mahgister Details Discussions Posts This discussion Message User 13,192 posts 04-13-2022 at 04:29am Copy Comment URL Report Comment Edit Delete
mahgister Details Discussions Posts This discussion Message User 13,192 posts 04-13-2022 at 04:35am Copy Comment URL Report Comment Edit Delete Some of the greatest pianists are way less known than most people think... A great career is not the same thing than GENIUS...It is true for all musician, many musical geniuses will stay unknown forever and less talented one universally acclaimed... I know it .... Pay attention when walking in the street perhaps you will stumble on a genius like unorthodox blind composer Moondog who was even creating minimalist school before it exist in the first place...... Too much circonstances explain a great career which has nothing to do with musical genius... We must listen music without reading most review of new albums... I decided for myself who is great and who is not for me.... If some performance put me almost near death or ectasy it is great.... All performances i put in this thread are great one... This is the reason i listen my 9000 albums ONE time or TWO at most... And this the reason i listen to a kernel of few hundreds all the time... In ALL musical genre... If you have a harem of thousand woman you will always go back to a very few if not one...Guess why? Love is the greatest aphrodisiac... Sound quality is secondary in musical experience on playback... But i love sound quality, my room is proof of that, anyway the worst recording are more "interesting" now in my room...They stay bad but we can decipher easily more acoustical cues...
bdp24 Details Discussions Posts This discussion Message User 9,872 posts 04-13-2022 at 04:52am Copy Comment URL Report Comment Edit Delete It depends on the degree of "badness", and to some degree by the nature of the music. Bernstein’s traversals of Beethoven’s symphonies---though not of audiophile purist sound quality---are not sabotaged to anywhere near the same degree as are those of Toscanini, which though musically magnificent are sonically pretty anemic. The sound of a symphony orchestra can really be emasculated by a poor recording. The sound quality of Glenn Gould’s J.S. Bach’s solo keyboard works recordings---also not of audiophile caliber---are not bad enough to get in the way of his performances. Though I prefer Bach on period instruments (for which the works were, after all, written to be performed on), Gould’s brilliance cannot be denied.