PS - Why do so many recent recordings of piano music give one the impression that someone's stuck a microphone too near the strings? Answer - because that's what happens much of the time. We're required to hear the thud of the hammers in preference to the kind of pianistic colour that the best pianists work hard at projecting. Makes me very annoyed.
What you describe as 'pianistic colour' is one particular category of colour (or, better, timbre). The approach both to playing and recording that tries to hide any sense of attack, any sounds more directly associated with the mechanism of the instrument (including the sound of the fingers on the keys) is what I would call auratic and tied in to a very specific late romantic aesthetic of timbre that is by no means necessarily appropriate for all music, past and present. There is a considerable amount of post-1945 music that aims for sounds in which the physical way in which they are produced is foregrounded or at least not hidden (Lachenmann would be one obvious example; but this is also a reason why attempts to produce more streamlined versions of Stockhausen's electronic works, obliterating the clunkiness of the equipment he used, to me remove an important part of the music).
Yes, Ian, you are correct to broaden the sphere of this discussion by bringing in situations where the composer might want - and indeed perhaps be well advised to want - some of the kinds of thing to which you draw attention here and to which I have admittedly not drawn attention in what I've written on the subject so far. I think that it is important to consider what the composer is aiming at in terms of how he/she perceives or hopes to perceive the listener's response to the end result; if a composer writes in such a way as to imply that the most appropriate results are likely to be produced by means of a certain degree of electronic intervention, then of course that must be taken on boaard in any consideration of what the music needs in presentation.
Not only recent music, either; the characteristic 'oik' sound produced by the very rapid damping mechanisms of Viennese fortepianos are intrinsic to the sound itself that was conceived by the composers, IMO, adding a certain edge and brightness; also the percussive sounds attained at higher dynamics (listen, for example, to Liv Glaser playing Mozart on such instruments) can punctuate and accentuate rather than be booming or rounded, as late romantic schools of playing aim for.
Important as this is, I think that it is a somewhat different issue, at least to the extent that you are writing her of the kinds of "authentic" performance practice that require the use of instruments of the day; I do not imagine that you would advocate attempts to replicate as nearly as possible on a modern keyboard instrument the kinds of sound that you write about here when a pianist decides to record such works on such a modern instrument. This is a matter that would appear to go well beyond the mere question of late Romantic or other playing styles as applied to the music of earlier eras.
I'm by no means advocating close miking as a universal approach either, just suggesting that it has its own specific purposes, and it would be a shame to see all of these aspects of instrumental sonority obliterated (as is occurring in both performance and recording these days, I feel) homogenised in the name of appropriating all music within such a late romantic aesthetic.
Indeed so - but so many other considerations are at work here beyond just the question of how such performances are miked during recording; there's the type of instrument used, its condition when used, the playing styles and disciplines (especially with reference to pedalling). We can't ask the keyboard composers of Mozart's day,not only because they're not available to speak to but because (a) we cannot know about their attitudes to performance of their work in the light of later developments in writing, playing and instrument manufacuture and design and (b) because they had no possibility to think about their work and its performance in the context of such performances being captured for posterity.
For recording purposes (piano), I always ask that the resultant sound replicate that of a live concert
I profoundly disagree. Recording has many more possibilities than simply being a poor man's live concert.
It may do, but if certain composers see it in that particular way in respect of their own work it is surely their prerogative to do at least that; this is where, in terms of my own piano music, I sought to agree with "autoharp" in that my ultimate aim is for something that happens in a live performance situation (so my ideas need not apply to composers whose priorities and emphases may be differnt to this).
It might be worth comparing here with popular music, where (at least nowadays) in many cases the recording becomes the 'basic version' of the music and live performances are an elaboration of that in large measure. If it's fine for popular musicians to conceive things in terms of studio sound, to be heard in either private or public settings (but generally smaller than concert venues), why not for classical?
I think that my answer here is already given above; if the composer wants to conceive something different to what might reasonably be expected from the desire to prioritise the values and expectations of live performance, then that's fine and must be considered from a different perspective.
It would seem as though you and I belong to that hopefully non-endangered species that still espouses the belief that recording (as the aforementioned record producer once put it) is a photocopy of the real thing;
How would you conceive of electronic music (particularly that created entirely in terms of a finished tape/CD work) in light of the above? Do you think of film or television as a photocopy of the theatre?
I think that my answer to that may be extrapolated from the above but, for the avoidance of doubt, I would add that I consider something made specifically for film or television to be different from something made specifically for live performance in the theatre; I remain concerned, however, that I may not fully have grasped your question here in the sense that my answer deals only with the matter of things originally conceived for different media as distinct from things originally conceived for one medium that are subsequentl;y reinterpreted in another, such as a stage play reworked for film or television.
Anyway - all very interesting stuff and I appreciate this being been pulled away from the Barraqué thread (and I fear that it is I who started to go sufficiently off-topic there to warrant a new thread on the subject now being discussed here!)...
Best,
Alistair