2 Comments

1. 

   Reidmt on June 12, 2006 at 4:36 am

   Ken,

   The allegedly “mastered” version online seems superior to the fairly raw version Michelle took home from the Symphony office. I have always held that Mahler live is a superior experience to almost any recording, and the OES performance was no different. We can listen to the tracks and hear notes we may have missed or chords out of tune, but none of this changes the fact that the OES put on a show better than I could have expected. I think that the tears and smiles both onstage and off are a better measure of the quality of the performance. I heard about the concert for over a week around town, and everyone who went heard and saw something special. I hope that a new generation of OES listeners were born that night.

   If any of your readers out there read the comments, I’d like them to know that a lot of the local players here spend most of their days teaching classes, attending to patients, trying jury trials, managing the mentally ill, farming, etc.

   Rest assured that, although the budget may be smaller and the concerts less grandiose, the OES board and its executive leadership are more concerned with improving the quality of the orchestra each performance. I know the Mahler was a killer concert, but concertgoers I talked to also were really pleased with the Copeland, Beethoven, and Hindemith, as well as others.

   Likewise, the exposure to pros the local players have had, for the most part, really opens their eyes to the possibilities of their own performance, and many have made the same commitment you have to making the OES better every concert. I’ve only been here two seasons, but from the first Shostakovich rehearsal to the Mahler concert, every cycle, rehearsal, and concert has been better than the last.

   Hope your summer is going well. I am proud of what we’ve done, and what we can look forward to in the coming years.

   Reid

2. 

   Administrator on June 12, 2006 at 9:47 am

   Hi Reid

   Thanks for weighing in! I wish more people would use the comment feature.

   In fact, there is only one change from the disc you would have heard at the office- we added a (very) small amount of compression to the signal to compensate for background computer noise.

   Say hi to everyone for me.

   Ken

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