About Classical Music

Classical music is a little different from pop, rock ‘n roll and other forms of “contemporary” music. It was created specifically for live performance (recording didn’t really exist when most of it was written), and classical performance practices have become both quite specialized and quite virtuosic. Some of the music is technically extremely difficult to perform – some is even written as a direct challenge to the performer! – and some, while appearing to be quite easy, is actually very hard to pull off. Faking isn’t allowed, and because the stuff is all written down and well-known by all your competitors, any little fudges you take will probably be noticed and commented on immediately (as in “Hah! Listen to how she burbled the second grace note in the third phrase of the counter-subject!”).

Tempos are often quite flexible and fluid (it’s called rubato), but usually with a solid underlying pulse. Dynamic range is quite large, going from the softest sounds humans can make to the loudest ones. The pure sound quality of the voices and instruments, and the sound of the hall, are key performance qualities.

All of this makes recording classical music a little different and quite challenging in its own way. The tendency, these days, is to record in stereo (or some sort of stereo mix) directly to DAT, and then to do a Great Deal of editing. At the post-production point, some EQ, compression and possibly additional reverb may be added. Because hall sound is so critical, recording is usually done on location. Traffic noise, aircraft flyovers, building noise and air handling are all serious problems. Room tone can vary from day to day, as can piano sound. Like much of the music, the recordings are often terribly exposed, compared to pop multitrack work. Anything you don’t get right is usually quite audible. There’s no getting away with noise gates, f’rinstance, in classical.

Kyoko Saito

Kyoko Saito is a young up-and-coming lyric soprano from Japan currently working out of New York. Through nepotism (she knows my son Keith, who is an operatic tenor), I got the opportunity to bid on recording her first album, a CD of classical art songs for voice and piano, and was very pleased and honored to be hired. The record label is Japanese with the very charming name of “Happy Echo!” The producer was an elegant and very musical Japanese woman from Yokohama named Sachiko Nakada. Part of the plan is to shop the album among the majors, most notably EMI, for international distribution. Toward that end, Ms. Nakada brought along a producer from EMI to observe the sessions.

The accompanist is a critical part of any such undertaking, and for these sessions Kyoko’s pianist was Dalton Baldwin, who is one of the leading accompanists in the world for this sort of music. Kyoko has worked with Dalton for the past seven or eight years, and the resulting comfortable and extremely focused togetherness of their performance contributed greatly to the success of the sessions.

Kyoko also brought her vocal coach, Lorraine Nubar, to the sessions. This turned out to be a great idea! Lorraine was able to keep Kyoko from losing it when things got a little tense, keep her voice focused and relaxed, and keep her from lapsing into bad habits as the inevitable sessions stresses built. I’d recommend a coach on hand for any serious solo album.

Finding a Venue

As I said above, usually these things are recorded in a concert hall of some sort. However, finding a good concert hall that is quiet, has a great piano, sounds right, and is available during a tight time window (constrained in this case by the conflicting schedules of Ms. Nakada, Kyoko and Dalton) is quite difficult. We called and surveyed a bunch of different halls in and around New York City and struck out. Everybody was either booked, didn’t have a decent piano, was noisy, didn’t sound very good or some combination of these.

I called my neighbor Tom Bates, who’s been through this, and asked for advice. He said, “Why don’t you use Ambient Recording Company, in Stamford, CT, where we did the near-field-monitor wine-tasting?” I confess I had never thought of using a studio, because, I guess, I’m just set in my classical recording ways. Anyway, the room at Ambient is pretty big and quite live, the piano is a really lovely and well-maintained 9’ Steinway D, and the place is plenty quiet. Happily, it also turned out that even with the SSL console it was cheaper than booking a hall and renting/carting in a piano.

I got Kyoko to come up to Stamford to check it out and she liked the place right away. The only problem I had was that it didn’t really sound like a concert hall. However, it had wonderful early reflections and so my plan was to add reverb to the stereo ambience of the room in post production. We booked.