I’m just back from a weekend
in Berlin, to interview Antoine Tamestit about his recording of Jörg Widmann’s
Viola Concerto – look out for the feature in the February 2018 issue of The Strad.
While there, I got the opportunity to sit in on recording sessions for the
coupling on the CD, Tamestit’s arrangements of Widmann’s Violin and Cello Duos,
some viola and cello, others for violin and viola. Much of my work involves
writing and editing reviews of classical recordings, but most talk about the
actual production process is speculative, so the visit to Teldex Studios proved
very interesting. What follows is a photo diary of the day, showing how it’s
done, with no secrets left untold – though when I made that threat to producer
Martin Sauer, he laughed ‘we have no secrets!’, so I’m holding him to that.
The studio is in a quiet residential
suburb in the south-west of the city. Like many recording studios, it was
previously a ballroom.
The interior walls are a
patchwork of acoustic panelling and exposed battens, where the reverberation
has been fine tuned for optimum resonance. The main control room is on the
former stage (see the ominous window below), though for this session a smaller
room was used, more convenient for chamber work.
The producer for the day,
Martin Sauer (below centre) is a legend in the industry (check out this list of credits). He works both for the studio itself, which is an independent company,
and for Harmonia Mundi, for whom this recording was being made. Martin
explained that the name, Teldex, reflected the studio’s history (I’m
paraphrasing his excellent English – he spoke English to me, German to the
engineer and French to the artists, all fluently). The studio had previously belonged
to Teldec, but became independent in 2002 (plenty more about the company that
their website, http://www.teldexstudio.de/)
taking several producers with it, including Martin.
Since then, it’s done well
for awards, and this display of Grammys greets visitors at the door, about half
of them are Martin’s.
But down to business. The
schedule looked punishing, nine movements, all in the can by the end of the
day. I was surprised how musical Martin’s input was in the proceedings, making
regular suggestions, mostly about balance but also about more subtle interpretive
issues. He doesn’t do much contemporary music, he tells me, as their isn’t the commercial
demand, about once every two years. So, for this session he had to rely on the
performers, as they’d worked with the composer, then he added ‘ ... of course,
if it was Brahms ... ’ Even so, as the
recording got under way, he was really getting into the music ...
... and annotating thoroughly
...
A brief lunch break offered
a chance to look around the place. All sorts of strange things collect in
recording studios. At a stretch of the imagination, I could think of reasons
for the barometer, but the vintage motorbike?
Martin showed me the studio
archive – very impressive! Every session is recorded onto a 500GB hard drive,
which is filed in one of these boxes along with the annotated score. The
artists named on these box spines are astonishing; everybody who’s anybody has
been through here at some stage.
Here are a few more images.
The picture at the bottom is of Martin (right) with the artists (L-R) Antoine Tamestit,
Marc Bouchkov and Bruno Philippe. Thanks to them for their hospitality, and
good luck with the edit, as they say. Look out for the album, on Harmonia Mundi
early next year – it should be a good one, it sounded great in the studio –
and, as mentioned above, my interview with Antoine in The Strad next February.
