Sorry, don’t think that works. Sergeant Pepper was released 1967. The “flying saucers” were installed in 1969, I think, but certainly later than ‘67.
Roger
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Wikipedia has a long and detailed article on the acoustic improvements made to the Royal Festival Hall.
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I think you’re right and I’m wrong Roger. I did a quick web search and found this:
- 4000 holes in Blackburn, Lancashire was nothing to do with potholes. John Lennon read in the daily mail about 4000 plastic circles were being provided by a Blackburn company to be hung in the Albert hall to improve the acoustics. Hence ‘now they know how many holes it takes to fill the Albert Hall’.*
But upon further investigation of where that contention came from it appears to be a cranky input from a single individual in a discussion of the origins of the lyrics of the song that the Guardian ran many years ago.
Everyone else on the discussion seems to have found the original local news item that 4000 potholes in the Blackburn area had been identified for needing repair. Back to the drawing board.
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Part way through this newly released album. Really enjoying it so far. Great recording full of atmosphere. I think I’ll have to buy a high def copy from Qobuz.
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I bought recently Karajan’s first complete cycle, from 1963, after he took over as Principal Conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic. On what look like very clean DGG pressings.
I bought a Harmonia Mundi Herreweghe box set a few years ago. Thirty discs (IIRC), about 10 of them Bach. Also works from the Renaissance to the 20th century. Including my favorite recording of the Bruckner 4th - an opinion not shared by many others, but then I don’t really like Bruckner. 
Mt favourite recording of Bruckner’s Fourth Symphony is a recording made by Karl Bœhm, conducting the Vienna Philharmonic, from about 1974 for Decca. On vinyl, it’s accommodated on four sides (rather than the usual two), so it is a sonic spectacular. True demonstration discs!
I also have a lovely EMI recording with Celibidache conducting his Munich players. (Celibidache conducting anything in recording studio is rare, as - like his old sparring partner Carlos Kleiber - he disliked the recording process intensely.)
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If I may be so bold as to join the conversation, I have always been partial to this recording of the Dvorak 9th. Israel Philharmonic with Bernstein. It sounds like a live recording to me. Quite lovely in the 2nd movement (as one might expect from Lenny) and quite explosive elsewhere. A lot of bombast and fun, and one of the first classical recordings I owned as a teenager. It also includes the 3 Slavonic Dances as a kicker.
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If it’s from Bernstein’s later period in life on a DGG disc, it is almost certainly a ‘live’ recording. Bernstein’s preference on those DGG recordings was to record live in the concert hall, and patch in any ‘corrections’ in the same ambient conditions after the performance had ended.
I imagine that the audience must have been advised that a recording was being made, so as not have some clever clogs burst in with applause just before the movement being played had ended, just to show how clever he was.
Bernstein’s DGG Beethoven and Mahler Symphony recordings were all recorded this way (and probably some other composers too whom I have forgotten).
Did Bernstein ever record for DGG? I though he was with Columbia in the 60s.
Edit: never mind. I see you always call it DGG no matter the period.
I see the Danish NSO/Luisi recordings of Nielsen’s 4th and 5th symphonies won the "Gramopohone” orchestral "Recording of the Year” award last night. I bought the hi-res download in March and they really are magnificent versions: highly recommended.
Stephen
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Isn’t it a bit like being blindfold in taxi and being toured around London being asked where are we every now and then?
Anyway, to paraphrase a quote about Thomas Pynchon, looking for a key in Wagner is like looking for sex in a novel by Jane Austen…
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How I hate that. Much better, especially after a good performance, for a few seconds of silence before the applause.
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I have a live performance by Carlos Kleiber of Beethoven’s Fourth Symphony (on an Orfeo CD) where there’s a brief bit of applause at the end, followed by a full thirty seconds’ silence, before the applause starts again. It sounds as if the audience in the hall were stunned, and took time to appreciate what they had just heard.
with the Solti Die Walkurie being given Spatial Audio award!
That’s no surprise. The Solti Decca ‘Ring’ is an extraordinary achievement, even 60-odd years after it was recorded. We have not really seen improvements in recording technology since then.
That’s why, even though I enjoy certain musical aspects of the live Keilberth Ring cycle from 1955 a bit more (Hans Hotter, for instance), I keep going back to the Solti as my favorite. The sound quality, mixing, etc. is just stunning and immersive, and it keeps getting better with the remastered recordings.
Is the Keilberth ‘Ring’ the set of (however many) LPs, issued by Testament?
So, I can download (legally) a stereo 192/24 set of the 2023 Ring for $70. I have the 2012 Blu-Ray. How much more will I love the remaster?
All the reviews say that the new remaster is stunningly successful and for what it’s worth, having spent hours with the original LPs back in the 60s, and off and on ever since, having listened to all of the remastered recordings, I agree with them.