The Naxos Blog

Vasily Petrenko and the RLPO’s Shostakovich series for Naxos has attracted critical acclaim and numerous plaudits, including ‘Orchestral Recording of the Year’ at the 2011 Gramophone Awards for Symphony No 10.  In this fascinating podcast, Vasily Petrenko talks to Edward Seckerson of The Independent about his relationship with the Shostakovich symphonies and his insights into the great composer’s—and fellow Russian’s—life and work. They also discuss the 10th Symphony, which Petrenko describes as “a perfect piece”, “less extreme than the other symphonies”, but also “very difficult to perform”. Album Details... Catalogue No.: 8.572461

Edward Seckerson of The Independent interviews Tony Banks. Album Details... Catalogue No.: 8.572986

Edward Seckerson of The Independent interviews Julian Lloyd Webber. Album Details... Catalogue No.: 8.572902

My last post was about the frequencies missing from MP3s.1 Today, I want to talk about bit rates. To make sensible decisions about bit rates, it helps to understand a bit about how MP3 encoding works. When your computer makes a CD into an MP3, it has three main ways of making the music take up less space: 1) It throws out sounds you probably can't hear - either because they're "masked" by louder sounds, or because they're only audible to a very small proportion of humans. Done right, this is an elegant exercise in efficiency. Done wrong (or too much) you music sounds tiny, thin and empty. 2) It describes the sound in terms of the shape of the wave, instead of as a big long list of values. If the wave isn't a very complicated shape, it can do this with virtually no loss of quality. Here are two MP3s of the same sound - a simple 440Hz sine wave. This is just about the easiest thing to make into an MP3. Although the first file is 10x the size of the second, they sound identical because you don't even need 16kb to record 1 second of sine wave. Like a stick of rock, the file just says "440hz at -3dBFS" all the way through. Here it is at 160kbps (mono) [mejsaudio src="http://blog.naxos.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/Sine-Wave-160kbps.mp3"] Here it is at 16kbps (mono) [mejsaudio src="http://blog.naxos.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/Sine-Wave-16kbps.mp3"] With our nice simple sine wave, there's no extra data to throw out, so they sound the same. If we give it something really complicated, though, we'll start to notice a difference.2 Here's a bit of Debussy's La Mer3, as a very high quality MP3: [mejsaudio src="http://blog.naxos.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/La-Mer-Excerpt-320kbps-MP3.mp3"] That sounds pretty good to me, but here it is again, a tenth of the size: [mejsaudio src="http://blog.naxos.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/La-Mer-Excerpt-32kbps-MP3.mp3"] Suddenly it sounds like it's being played down a telephone. A file this size can happily hold a simple sine wave, but in trying to describe the complex harmony and sonority of Debussy's orchestration, it has to make some cuts. All the notes are still there, but we've lost a lot of what is beautiful about it. When we're looking for a bit rate that works for us, this is the outcome we're looking to avoid. 3) Once the fat is trimmed off (1) and the important sounds reduced to their component waves (2), the computer looks for commonly-occuring patterns in what remains, so the information in them only needs to be recorded once. In our first example above, that means saying "440Hz, -3bDFS" to define the single note, and "ditto" for the rest of the file. With La Mer, the opportunities are less obvious, but if you see time in 44100ths of a second like the computer does, there's plenty of repetition here. By itself, this third type of compression is lossless - you get exactly the same data out as you put in, but it takes up less space while being stored. The combination of these three techniques allow us to make the files much, much smaller. Even the highest-quality MP3s are just a fifth of the size of the original files, but they can be much smaller. The goal is to find the smallest file size that sounds good to you. Let's start with a 16kbps file. At this size, you could fit more than five days of music on a single CD: [mejsaudio src="http://blog.naxos.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/La-Mer-Short-Excerpt-16kbps.mp3"] I want you to make up your own mind, but I think you'll agree that sounded pretty bad. This next one is twice the size, at 32kbps. This would let you put 54 hours of music on a CD. [mejsaudio src="http://blog.naxos.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/La-Mer-Short-Excerpt-32kbps.mp3"] This one is twice the size again: 64kbps. You'd get 27 hours of this on one CD. [mejsaudio src="http://blog.naxos.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/La-Mer-Short-Excerpt-64kbps.mp3"] Next is 128kbps,

I've been putting together a blog post on the way to get the best sound out of MP3s, but there are so many elements to deal with, I thought I'd tackle it in pieces. For this post, I'm just going to talk about the missing frequencies in an MP3. One of the ways we can fit more music into an MP3 is by discarding the least important information. High frequency sounds have a lot going on very quickly, and they can take up a lot of space, so there's a lot to be gained from getting rid of them.1 Still. We don't want data to be missing. If the range of human hearing is 20-20,000Hz, and everything above 16,000Hz is missing, that feels like a lot. It seems like that would be 20% of the music. That's not how frequencies work, though. Every time we go up an octave, the frequency doubles. Going up like this, numbers can get pretty big, pretty fast, and it makes the high frequencies look a lot more important than they really are. If you wanted to make a piano covering the entire range of human hearing2, you'd need to give it 120 keys instead of the normal 88. If, halfway through building it, you decided you only wanted it to go up to 10,000Hz, not 20,000Hz, you wouldn't remove half the keys. You'd only remove 12 of them - seven white ones and five black ones. In any case, 20,000Hz is the highest anybody can hear, not the highest everybody can hear. Above that, your pets might notice, but you won't. Our sensitivity to high frequencies deteriorates with age, so for most adults the ceiling is more like 16,000Hz. Your kids can probably hear things you can't, and your pets can hear things your kids can't. If, like me, you've spent a lot of time around very loud music, your hearing might top out even lower. I can't hear much above 13,000Hz. Try it for yourself: this is a 30-second sweep across the full range of human hearing, from 20hz to 20,000hz. Hit the play button, and listen until it goes quiet: that's as high as you can hear.3 [If you're reading this in a feed-reader, you might have to scroll to the bottom of the page or visit the site the see the player] It goes up by 666Hz/Second, so the frequencies are: Start: 20Hz 1 Second: 686Hz 2 Seconds: 1,352Hz 3 Seconds: 2,018Hz - The highest note in the Queen of the Night's Aria 4 Seconds: 2,684Hz 5 Seconds: 3,350Hz 6 Seconds: 4,016Hz - The highest note on a piano4 7 Seconds: 4,682Hz 8 Seconds: 5,348Hz 9 Seconds: 6014Hz 10 Seconds: 6,680Hz 11 Seconds: 7,346Hz 12 Seconds: 8,012Hz 13 Seconds: 8,678Hz 14 Seconds: 9,344Hz 15 Seconds: 10,010Hz 16 Seconds: 10,678Hz 17 Seconds: 11,342Hz 18 Seconds: 12,008 Hz 19 Seconds: 12,674 Hz 20 Seconds: 13,340Hz - This is where it goes quiet for me 5 21 Seconds: 14,006Hz 22 Seconds: 14,672Hz 23 Seconds: 15,338Hz 24 Seconds: 16,004Hz - Very few adults can hear anything above here 25 Seconds: 16,670Hz - A 192kbps MP3 won't have much above here 26 Seconds: 17,336Hz 27 Seconds: 18,002Hz - A 256kbps MP3 won't have much above here 28 Seconds: 18,668Hz 29 Seconds: 19,334Hz - A 320kbps MP3 won't have much above here 30 Seconds: 20,000Hz - Still audible to other animals6 There's an argument that, while these frequencies might be inaudible by themselves, they add character to other sounds in ways that are perceptible to our ears. If this were true, it would be relatively straightforward to prove it and, as far I can see, nobody ever has. It also doesn't stand up to common sense. Sounds simply don't become more noticeable when there's other noises, indeed, the opposite is widely accepted. So there you go: unless you're a dog, you can test your hearing and pick and MP3 format that only excludes frequencies you can't hear. There are, of course, other aspects of MP3 encoding that affect the quality of the sound. Next time, we'll look at bit rates, fixed and variable, and the effect these have on the sound. 1The point I wanted to make here is way too nerdy for the first footnote.7

Shostakovich’s Sixth and Twelfth Symphonies both had their origins in large-scale projects about Lenin, though the Sixth was eventually to emerge as one of the composer’s most abstract and idiosyncratic symphonies. The long, intensely lyrical and meditative slow movement that opens the work is one of the composer’s most striking. The Twelfth, one of the least played of Shostakovich’s symphonies in the West, became less a celebration of Lenin’s legacy than a chronological depiction of events during the Bolshevik Revolution. ‘The playing is fabulously crisp and committed, while the interpretations combine atmosphere and a sense of proportion—to the benefit of the youthful First, which receives an eerily effective performance, free of exaggeration.’ (Financial Times on Naxos 8.572396 / Symphonies Nos. 1 and 3) Album Details... Cat. No. 8.572658

In this exclusive audio podcast Rutter talks to Edward Seckerson about how a confirmed agnostic became immersed in a world of churches and choral paeans of praise. He recalls his gentle childhood, his doodlings at an old upright piano which was only there because the previous occupants couldn't get it out of the door. He reflects on why he has never written a musical when his love of the genre and his ear for a good tune dictated he should. And on that note, what it was like to be a tunesmith at a time when it was so deeply unfashionable to be one. The immensely popular choral composer had his first carol - the Shepherd's Pipe Carol - published when he was still a teenager and went on to compose more than two dozen others. The royalties got bigger and so did the commissions. His reputation quickly spread Stateside where he still conducts every year at Carnegie Hall in New York. His latest recording for Naxos brings together three large-scale compositions spanning almost two decades. His Gloria was a milestone for him, the first of his pieces to open doors in America. Magnificat is a joyous setting, a kind of Latin American fiesta with "hit" numbers for soprano gently drawing sustenance from the world of musical theatre, and Te Deum springs its own big hymnic surprise at the close. Album details Catalogue No. 8.572653

The latest instalment in Vasily Petrenko's highly acclaimed cycle of the Shostakovich symphonies offers a telling flashback to the composer's youth. Symphony No.1 - his sensational symphonic debut - is, according to Petrenko, a whistle-stop tour through revolutionary Petrograd with Shostakovich donning the masks of comedy and tragedy in practical pursuit of his already highly developed sense of irony. As Petrenko explains to Edward Seckerson, the really big influence here is Stravinsky's Petrushka, (as witness the devilishly flashy solo piano part) and there is something of the feel of a silent movie in the flickering imagery. Symphony No.3 "The First of May" offers a rather more prescribed view of the Revolution with its brassy choral paean redolent of those striking propaganda posters. Album Details... Catalogue No. 8.572396

In 2010 Vasily Petrenko was named Male Artist of the Year at the Classical Brit Awards. His ongoing cycle of the Shostakovich symphonies for Naxos has garnered extraordinary reviews and the latest in the series - the defiant 10th Symphony, regarded by many as the most perfectly balanced of all - represents yet another step forward in this extraordinary symphonic chronicle of Soviet life and times. In this exclusive audio podcast Petrenko talks to Edward Seckerson about the genesis of the cycle in general and the 10th Symphony in particular. Album details Catalogue No.: Naxos 8.572461

A podcast introduction to Russian Music for Cello & Piano, a new CD featuring cellist Wendy Warner and pianist Irina Nuzova. Writing in the Newark Star Ledger, Bradley Bamberger said "American cellist Wendy Warner pairs a huge, lustrous tone with diamond-edge virtuosity ..." This recording features well established works like Rachmaniov's Sonata in G minor, alongside such rarities as Nicolai Myaskovsky's Sonata No. 2 in G minor. The program also includes music by Scriabin, Schnittke and Prokofiev, all played with wonderful virtuosity and emotional power. Come listen to the podcast, then buy the CD so you can hear the entire pieces. Album details... Catalogue No.: Cedille CDR 90000 120

Jose Serebrier was 16 years old when he wrote his Symphony No. 1, and although he is better known as a conductor, he has been an active composer for more than five decades. This podcast, and this CD, trace his musical journey through music he has composed in four different decades. Included are the Symphony No. 1, composed in 1956, his Double Bass Concerto, composed in 1971, the Violin Concerto, composed in 1991, and three shorter works composed in the past decade. On this CD, Jose Serebrier serves as both composer and conductor, and is joined by a stellar group of musicians - double bass virtuoso Gary Karr, violinist Philippe Quint, actor Simon Callow, and the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra and Chorus. Album details... Catalogue No.: Naxos 8.559648

For most of his life, Danish composer Rued Langgaard had great difficulty getting his music performed, and for decades after his death in 1952, his work was all but forgotten. That is now changing, thanks to Langgaard's amazing music, and thanks to the efforts of people like conductor Thomas Dausgaard, and the Danish National Symphony Orchestra, who have been reintroducing this music to modern audiences. As the three works on this disc show, Langgaard was a composer with a unique vision, and exceptional talent. Seen from today's perspective, it's hard to believe there was ever any doubt about Langgaard's music. Album details... Catalogue No.: Dacapo 6.220535

Were it not for Dr. Enrico Mihich, the music of Marcel Tyberg would almost certainly be lost forever. Tyberg entrusted all of his scores with Mihich, just before he was deported to Auschwitz. For more than six decades, Mihich carried the scores with him, trying to find a conductor who would pay attention to them. Finally, in 2005, Dr. Mihich met with JoAnn Falletta, Music Director of the Buffalo Philharmonic. Maestra Falletta saw what so many others had failed to see - that Tyberg's music was original, beautiful and worth performing. This podcast, with it's interview with JoAnn Falletta, traces the history of how she and the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra came to rescue the music of Marcel Tyberg. Album details... Catalogue No.: Naxos 8.572236

Evan Ziporyn is a composer, bass clarinettist, and has worked as a beekeeper. These interests collide in his piece "Hive", a wonderful piece for four clarinets based on the sounds and activities of a honey bee hive. With music by Ziporyn, John Harbison, Astor Piazzolla, Gunther Schuller, Thomas Barker and Vincent Persichetti, this CD dives deep into the fascinating world of contemporary clarinet music. The performers on this CD include Evan Ziporyn, Theodore Schoen, Laura Ardan, Ricardo Morales, Timothy Paradise and James Ognibene. Album details... Catalogue No.: Naxos 8.572264

After almost 2 centuries, one would think that every piece by Ludwig van Beethoven has long since been performed and recorded - but it isn't so. This podcast looks at the Beethoven Project Trio (pianist George Lepauw, violinist Sang Mee Lee, and cellist Wendy Warner) and their adventures as they gave the first US performances of several trios by Beethoven, along with the world premiere recordings of these works. Album details... Catalogue No.: Cedille CDR 90000 118