Label BIS, promotion jusqu'au 31/12/24

[orfeo_monteverdi]

Pour les discophiles,

L'excellent label de musique classique BIS, "Grammophone Label Of The Year 2024", tout récemment racheté par apple, est en promotion - 35% à la Boîte à Musique jusqu'au 31/12/24.
Disquaire classique bien connu à Bruxelles. Font des expéditions vers l'étranger aussi (négocier les frais de port pour un colis "bien chargé" ?)
Nombre d'interprétations des cantates de Bach par Suzuki sont d'ailleurs en magasin  !
page promo BIS.

On rappellera que la qualité des enregistrements chez BIS est excellente.
Et la dynamique, NON-COMPRESSÉE ! Ce dernier point avait soulevé une critique injustifiée de la part d'un critique de disque qui regrettait que le niveau d'enregistrement était top bas, et qu'il fallait ouvrir le potentiomètre de volume de l'amplificateur plus que de raison afin d'apprécier l'enregistrement. Voici ce que le directeur du label, Robert von Bahr, lui a répondu sur Music Web International, à propos d'Une vie de héros, de Strauss par l'Orchestre Philharmonique de Rotterdam sous la direction de Y. Nézet-Séguin:

Citation :when you [the critic] start to write about technical details you write erroneously
Specifically, your comments on on low-level recordings. Quotes:
...not helped by a very low level recording...
...And why is the recording level ridiculously low,

Well, the answer is the following: The recording level is NOT ridiculously low, or, actually, low at all. However, you do make the same mistake that most of the general public do, but which you shouldn't, and that is that you compare an honest, original-dynamic recording with all the compressed, manipulated and faked recordings out there.
[...]
The obvious advantage is that you get a recording with the absolutely correct dynamic range* and audio level, as performed by the Artists.
The equally obvious disadvantage is that the average level will be lower than on recordings which have been compromised, either electronically or by hand, meaning that their dynamic range has been diminished, i.e. compressed, which all is another way of saying that our recording has a vastly superior dynamic range, to be literal, precisely as vastly superior as you perceive the level to be ridiculously low!!

Yes, I do concede that our system of recording gives the equipment of the listener a tougher workout. You have to crank the amplifier up and have good speakers in order to enjoy the recording to its fullest capacity. It is for those discerning people that we make our recordings.

Music Web International

*Détails techniques:

• If you cared to measure the peaks of this recording, you'd find that they go up to the maximum allowed. Indeed you write yourself ...And despite some thrilling tuttis... (how can they be thrilling, if they are desperately "under-recorded"??). The peaks of basically all other recordings also reach that same maximum. However, the extended dynamic range (that's a technical term, meaning the decibel difference between the loudest and softest passages of a given recording) that is part of the 24-bit recording and SACD reproduction systems makes it possible to encapsulate what the composer wrote and the artists performed, without any alterations, level-wise. (Possibility, though, doesn't make for actual actions, as most other companies have shown through their fake and manipulated recordings.) Simply put: we define the loudest crash of the whole SACD, put that at 0 dB, and let the rest be in peace, i.e. what is being performed.

J'ai pour ma part acquis, entre autres, le très bon Satie par Noriko Ogawa, sur piano Erard de 1890.
Existe aussi une intégrale Ebussy, par Noriko Ogawa chez BIS, en promo aussi.