Michael Cooper wrote:

>I agree that it is a customary and accepted practice to edit both live
>and recorded performances, although I think that it is often unnecessary
>or even misguided.  It is funny that just as I was reading Mr. Runnion's
>last post, I was listening to Lipatti's recording of the Grieg concerto,
>and he hit a clam on a chord in the middle movement.

Our record has a couple of mistakes on it too.  Some will always get
through, and we decided early on that if we were very happy with the
musical content of a certain take we'd put it in even if there was a
little boo-boo.

>Evgeni Kissin's recital in Chicago in 1998 was an exciting event, hardly
>marred by his mistakes in the fugue of the Beethoven sonata.  I'm actually
>disappointed to think that if any of his recitals from that or another year
>were preserved on disk, that it would be "cleaned-up" and made in my eyes,
>more sterile and like a studio recording.

I agree with you here, actually.  I think a live recording should be a
live recording, including whatever notes land on the floor.  I wish there
were more of them, boo-boos and all.  I was sort of disappointed in that
Kremer-Maisky-Argerich when I read that they did a clean-up session for the
rest of the night.  I would have preferred the *real* live performance by
these great artists.

>I'd prefer the thousands of live mistakes by Richter, Cortot, Horowitz,
>et al.  that we have preserved, to the sanitized recording and sanitized
>playing which disgraces many of our modern recordings.

I'm curious, does anyone know when recording engineers began splicing tape
and editing performances for recordings? Perhaps one might be surprised at
the performances you thought were "live", unedited recordings.

David Runnion