Last Friday, Julie and I attended NC Symphony with guest artist pianist Yevgeny Sudbin who played Nikolai Medtner's Piano Concerto No. 2. It was an amazing performance, the performer and composition, orchestra and conductor had a great "moment."
At the public concert there were more mics set up than the usual 4 used for recording the live broadcasts for radio. NC Symphony is a department of State of NC, so the concerts are broadcast for free on last monday of the month, 8pm (streaming) on WUNC. (http://www.wunc.org) The extra mics were for recording the gig for Swedish record company BIS as reference for an upcoming recording session to follow the next week.
Today I received an interesting email from the Symphony containing a link to notes taken during the recording sessions by the orchestra manager, documenting the events happening during the recording. I found it to be an interesting read, maybe you will too:
http://www.ncsymphony.org/whatsnew/index.cfm?id=43
I noted the mention of Spendor speakers used for monitoring the session.
BIS Records publishes my favorite Beethoven symphony cycle. Sound quality is great. This year the NC Symphony is recording 2 disks. This Medtner Piano Concerto to be released with a Rachmaninoff concerto also played by Sudbin back in January 08. Another CD will contain a hodgepodge of more modern compositions, including the recording premier of American composer Christopher Rouse's "Friandises" - an incredible composition we heard last spring. No recording exists of it now, I was blown away and can't wait to hear it again.
The new NC Symphony record with the Chistopher Rouse composition I mentioned above is released today :D
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hGRlP63mzPNC8Be97oF-Le-Je8jgD96JI5P00
http://www.newsobserver.com/105/story/1419746.html
It is on BIS records, same label as the awesome Beethoven cycle I am always talking about. Fantastic sonics, and hybrid SACD.
Buy it here:
http://www.ncsymphony.org/store/index.cfm?cid=1&pid=196&link=el&trid=33&nl=12
(http://www.naxos.com/SharedFiles/Images/cds/others/BIS-SACD-1644.gif)
This record just received Gramophone Editor's Choice!! woohoo! I have been listening to it a lot, nice recording. It has Rouse's Friandises, but not the Medtner, which is coming on a separate CD.
Gramophone review... (http://www.ncsymphony.org/userfiles/file/Gramophone%20June%2009%20Original.pdf)
It also contains the piece played by Branford Marsalis Quartet and orchestra, called "Lions," that I wrote about (http://www.audionervosa.com/index.php?topic=732.msg7074#msg7074) back in November 2007.
Buy it (http://www.arkivmusic.com/classical/album.jsp?album_id=211988)
Listen (http://www.bis.se/naxos.php?aID=BIS-SACD-1644)
It's on sale now at ArkiveMusic.com $17, dual layer SACD.