Gnessin Academy Piano Concerto - Pan 3

[Mixinthecloud]

Hi Mitc,

I always feel a little uneasy and uncomfortable critiquing this style of music. Although I enjoy this genre immensely and appreciated it more as I get older, I definitely wasn't born with the classical music gene. A purist, not by a long shot. So take my comments with a grain of salt.

It's interesting listening to your mix having seen the photos Mike has posted. Your mixes represent the recorded space well. I like the natural sound and the captured ambience. This is where I get a bit confused as to how one should approach this captured space and represent it in the mixing stage. With this genre, there is as much room sound in the recording as the performance itself. Is it therefore best to present the music within it's natural environment or do we try make it sound like it was performed in the Musikverein in Vienna with some added artificial input. This is where referencing becomes an issue also. Concert halls all sound different.

Your reasoning and approach is interesting and by all means, and a lot more articulate and thought out than that of my workings. I found after basic room balance and gentle re-enforcement with the close mics that any track eq moves thereafter were very reactive and I didn't like what was happening to the overall sound, so I kept this processing very minimal.

Back to your mix, for me and my ears I am wondering if there is too much detail coming through in the close mic's and not enough room sound? Also I feel I'm missing that lovely warm sustained bottom end that extends the bass notes into the room that I hear in a lot of recordings. I guess it would take some additional reverb to introduce this. In saying that, the third mix does seem to be better in this regard as opposed to the first mix which sounds very tight. Otherwise Mitc, I like what I am hearing. Your natural and conservative approach has paid off.

I would love to see how a pro would mix and present this piece, especially in regards to reverbs and space.

Dave

Dave,
I too had and have trepidation about using my known skills at mixing popular music and reconciling that with classical. Two quite discreet approaches, I would think. That being said and since this is a piano concerto, I felt it was important to try and present the instrument and the artist playing it like I was sitting in the hall enjoying the performance. With so many excellent sources to choose from in this recording there are serious decisions to make about how both the piano and the orchestra are presented. What I was hearing was to get the orchestra to sound bigger and more lush was to maximize the hall mics. But that approach washed out the piano, which after all is the main focus of the performance. Now I could have added artificial reverb, but that just didn't seem to make sense considering the well recorded hall ambience. Adding artificial reverb would have taken the performance out of this hall and into something imaginary and I really wanted to capture the performance in this hall. With that decision made, I then had to balance the piano and the hall and pretty much let the orchestra fall where it would accordingly and that did not present any real problems for me. I picked a spot in the hall I wanted to listen from essentially and built the mix around that. What I did do was boost the hall some during the overture and the exit but drawing the room back during the piano performance. Subtle, but if you listen closely you can sense the perspective of the orchestra change when the piano begins.

I did listen to other performances of this and found most recordings were very room heavy. However, these were performances in much larger halls and with larger orchestras. Let's not forget this is really a chamber orchestra in a smaller hall and with an unconventional sectional layout. These are the characters that make the performance and the recording unique and I feel it is my responsibility as the mixer to represent both the performance and the place accurately. This is a purely subjective process.

I would also like to hear from an experienced professional orchestral mixer and discuss approaches and philosophies.