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Live recordings. Cough and applause. Can you stand them?

5K views 77 replies 26 participants last post by  BlackAdderLXX 
#1 ·
What's your opinion?
Is coughing and/or applause, deal breaker for an otherwise excellent live recording?
For me, absolutely. I just can't tolerate both.
I don't own many live recordings just for these two reasons. The moment I detect either of them, the recording will go on the shelve for ever. I will never listen to it again. Thankfully, there are too many choices for good recordings.
In the Concert halls there is no alternative but in my private listening, when I am in my favorite composer's musical universe, there is no need to suffer the "noise pollution"...

Glenn Gould's humming is something different...:D
 
#56 · (Edited)
Since I've already been censored twice today on this thread for trying to clear up some health misinformation, I'll embed my point in classical music terms:

According to Wikipedia a performance of Bruckner's 8th Symphony was cancelled in 1891 on the grounds that it posed a health concern. See Wikipedia entry for "Symphony no. 8 (Bruckner)":

"...a Munich performance of [Bruckner's 8th Symphony] by [Herman] Levi was cancelled because of a feared outbreak of cholera.."

So was the cancellation of Bruckner's concert a government conspiracy or an exercise in sound mitigation of public health concerns?
 
#57 ·
Since I've already been censored twice today on this thread for trying clear up some health misinformation, I'll embed my point in classical music terms:

According to Wikipedia a performance of Bruckner's 8th Symphony was cancelled in 1891 on the ground of it posed a health concern. See Wikipedia entry for "Symphony no. 8 (Bruckner)":

"...a Munich performance of [Bruckner's 8th Symphony] by [Herman] Levi was cancelled because of a feared outbreak of cholera.."

So was the cancellation of Bruckner's concert a government conspiracy or an exercise in sound mitigation of public health concerns?
I'm afraid that some posts in the vicinity of the one I complained about got hit with the delete stick. It wasn't personal, and I don't blame the mods for fly-swatting and occasionally knocking over some vases!

And to answer your question... it was the latter.
 
#59 · (Edited)
It depends on what the piece is, how disruptive the noise is, and how good the performance is.

Applause doesn't usually bother me, although occasionally I think there can be too much of it in opera recordings where it occurs in the middle of the music, especially if the performance completely stops or the music becomes inaudible because of it. But this usually happens because the performance just heard was really good, so it's understandable. Applause at the end of a whole performance or act is fine with me.

Coughing is a bit less tolerable for me though. A little bit is OK. I'm pretty sure I've even heard studio recordings that have coughing (Berstein's New York Le Sacre). I can't stand when it gets to an extreme though. Apparently Jon Vickers once yelled at an audience to stop coughing while he was onstage. That's a frustration I can understand! Someone has mentioned before in another thread or something that the coughing is really irritating during the Knappertsbusch Parsifal recordings, especially since there are many quiet parts. I agree. I've found it really hard for me to enjoy the famous Parsifal on Philips because of this. I mean it was Bayreuth, summertime, how was there that much coughing? It can be quite annoying.

Edit: I see someone posted the recording of Vickers yelling, lol.
 
#71 · (Edited)
I don't mind coughing during a live performance, and which I'm attending (pre-pandemic of course), but coughing kills recordings. Any noise from an audience kills the recording because it essentially becomes part of the performance—the same damned cough, at the same time, every time a listen. Might as well just go ahead and write the cough into the sheet music.
 
#73 ·
I don't mind coughing during a live performance, and which I'm attending (pre-pandemic of course), but coughing kills recordings. Any noise from an audience kills the recording because it essentially becomes part of the performance-the same damned cough, at the same time, every time a listen. Might as well just go ahead and write the cough into the sheet music.
This is a lot like how I feel. The extra noises are worse over time because you start to anticipate them. This is also why I don't like it when studio recordings of operas add a bunch of unnecessary extra noises that are not in the score or libretto.
 
#75 · (Edited)
I'm annoyed because a lot of coughing could be suppressed if the audience member cared. I have a chronic cough condition and I never know when it will come on. But I can hold it until pauses in the program.

Even worse than coughing is rattling paper of any kind, that is totally preventable. Don't keep opening and closing your program and don't unwrap cellophane-sealed lozenges during a concert. Just don't.

But you know what? I think about one quarter of any audience doesn't really want to be there and doesn't care about being fastidious. How do I know? In other threads here half the people have no one close to them who is really into classical music, yet almost everyone goes to concerts in pairs or groups.
 
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