Reccently I've been listening to numerous interpretations of the Well-Tempered Clavier. The liner notes make no mention of microphone placement, so I have no idea why the soundstage of what should be a single keyboard instrument, harpsichord or piano, can be so variable.
Thank you for your interesting topic which would attract attentions of not only myself but also many people visiting this thread.
Excellent recordings of solo piano (and harpsichord/cembalo) music and their HiFi audio reproduction have been one of my major concerns throughout my long-year music and audio enjoyment since I used to play piano quite often, classical ones from Bach to Debussy, just for my and family enjoyments. I also have been to so many wonderful piano concerts in Japan and abroad.
You would please visit my posts
here and
here on my audio project thread regarding
my "audio sampler/reference tracks" for piano solo and harpsichord, respectively. In those two posts I rather intensively discussed "stunning recordings" of five (5) piano tracks and three (3) harpsichord tracks.
I fully agree with you that even in these "stunning" recorded tracks, the recording venue, microphone selections and settings, mixing/mastering engineering/preference, are all different with each other; we cannot tell, of course, which one would be the best. I (we) can only say that this type of recording would very nicely fit for my personal preference...
By the way, I fully agree with you that the total recording quality should be always stay consistent throughout of any specific CD or LP "albums", at least.
I also agree with you that in many recorded tracks we have very limited information on the microphone selections/settings and other recording engineering; I always "wonder" and "guess", like you do, what and how would have been the recording/mixing technology and engineering for the specific music track I listened to.
Let me share with you one recent typical example case.
On
the thread entitled "The Truth about many "Audiophile" Piano Recordings", I shared in
my post here the wonderful performance of
Andras Schiff playing Bach Overture and Suites in French Style in B Minor BWV831.
IMHO, this performance (and the recording) is one of the "World Music Heritages", indeed.
I used to stick to Glenn Gould's wonderful performance of BWV831 for the long period, but now this Schiff's BWV831 occupies the top position on my preference list (having 11 performances by various pianists in my library) for BWV831.
Very much interestingly, however, I (we) hardly see microphone(s) at least in the video image even though the recording quality is amazing and stunning.
Accordingly thereafter, we discussed a lot about possible microphone(s) and their settings in the posts
#171,
#174,
#178,
#180,
#186,
#189,
#190,
#191, and
#193. Our final possible consensus after these interesting discussions was that the splendid recording engineer would have used
tiny PZM microphone(s) (or so called boundary microphones) inside of the Steinway piano. The technology and engineering of microphones looks now far beyond of my very limited knowledge, I assume.
In any way, excellent recording of piano/harpsichord is always a great challenge for recording engineers, and the HiFi reproduction of such recorded tracks is always great challenge for our home audio systems.
Edit:
As
@mSpot kindly shared
here,,,
Regarding the
"Andras Schiff Live Performance in Bachfest 2010 Leipzig", you can find the entire video on YouTube;
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLhIP1CNbYhVObXv7ByHmE5oETjj6RXyAN
and
The concert was filmed and released by EuroArts, and available from various sources including Apple Music:
https://music.apple.com/ag/album/andrás-schiff-plays-bach-live-from-bachfest-2010-visual/1595036780
I am happy finding in the ending credit that
"A production of EuroArets Music International in coproduction with NHK, Japan".
