Listening to the last recital of Dinu Lipatti driving in to the University this morning, I thought something was wrong with my truck. But no, it was the art of noise reduction turning the noise floor into a rising and falling extra voice. Because of the noise dynamism, it now competes with the beauty and spirit of the music, and is shaped by the performer’s gestures. I don’t like it! My mind can hear through a welter of noise to majestic cathedrals of musical sound. Give me hiss and scratch, but let it be steady and therefore ignorable.
In the case of Lipatti, recorded at Besançon mid-September 1950, the field recording was done to lacquer disc or magnetic tape. Sonic evidence (that noise floor) points to tape. The recording was released some seven years later as a mono LP (Angel B 3556). A set of metal parts were therefore made. Is anyone out there curious about the technical details of this recording, surely one of the great recordings of the 20th century? Are there details to be found? Speak!
Some writers on the topic bemoan the remastering, miss the veil of noise. I am specifically complaining about the dynamic noise floor. Re-master all you like, just make it musically invisible. Is that possible? I know it is. But who’s got access to the tapes? The plates? The parts? The LP? I’ll bet I could bid on the LP if it came up on eBay and I had some spare money.
On the drive home, the day had warmed. In the twenty minutes I had listened on the way in, I’d gotten past the Partita and the Sonata. I was up to the Impromptu. Schubert has his motor running constantly. On top of it he floats a melody which would make Lady Gaga proud. But with the windows now open, the outside world, the world of the rural road in a PM rush of people getting back to their homes in the boonies was now in competition with the fragile Dinu and his brilliant effort, recorded, remastered and loaded up into the Ford truck’s cd player. A passing motorcycle added a voice to Schubert’s, making a random, asynchronous commentary. My mind duly added it to the music, noting the harmonies that rose up and died away. This is the way experience unfolds: making something of what arrives by chance before the senses, being distracted by what has deliberately been taken away.