Sidebar: The Classical Recording Session

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The Grammy Awards were first awarded in 1958, and the engineering awards were part of that first year’s accolades, separated into Classical and Non-Classical.¹ Historian Susan Schmidt Horning notes that it was around this time that “classical and rock recording now embodied ‘quite an opposite set of worlds and aesthetic requirements.”² The first Producer of the Year award was given in 1975, with a separate Classical category starting in 1980, a distinction that continues to this day. The Recording Academy recognizes that the production of classical recordings is fundamentally different than in other genres, and the reasons are key to understanding the story of Telarc and its recordings.

Note that for this page, the term “studio” encompasses all the sorts of recording that typically happen in a studio setting, which includes Pop, Rock, Country, Hip Hop and many others. Click on the various headers below to read more about what is the same and what is different in these ways of recording.

In the earliest days of recording, musicians would gather around a recording device and play all at once. Balancing would be accomplished by moving closer or farther away. Modern recording technology allows performers to be recorded on different days in different places, with the instruments performing one at a time or in smaller groupings such as bass and drums. If the band or part of the band play together, they are still typically separated acoustically, so that each instrument’s sound is recorded in isolation. Then the engineer mixes it all together to create the overall sound. The recording space is generally non-reverberant with the reverberation added later to help generate a cohesive sound.³

The placement of instruments in the sound field is arbitrary in a recording of this type. One might expect the drum set to sound like it is upstage center, since that’s where they typically appear on stage. But it would not be wrong to place them off to one side in the mix, or have them sound as if they occupy the entire width of the stage. That would be an artistic choice. In classical music, this is not at all the case.

In classical recording, though, the ensemble typically is recorded with every member of the ensemble , often part of a concert hall or other performance venue. The engineer endeavors to capture the way the sound of the ensemble interacts with and develops in the acoustics, which are usually designed so that the sound lasts for a few seconds before dying away.⁴ There might be small adjustments as the session goes on, but the engineer generally leaves the balancing of instruments to the performers. Ideally the recording gives the listener the impression that they are in that space with the ensemble, as though at a concert, listening from the best possible spot in the room. Telarc’s engineers worked hard to record as simply as possible, and their recordings were noted for “the astounding immediacy of the company’s recorded sound.”⁵

The placement of instruments in the sound field is especially critical in audiophile-quality classical recording. Unlike popular music, Telarc and other classical labels seek to reproduce something that already exists, something of which the listener likely has foreknowledge. For standard symphonic repertoire, for instance, the strings are in the front of the orchestra (or “downstage”), spread across the width of the stage. First violins are on the left, then typically second violins, violas, and violoncellos, with the basses behind them. There are some variations on this for particular repertoire (second violins on the right for the music of Mozart, for instance), but the strings are always at the front. Behind them are the woodwinds, in two rows, and then across the back of the stage are the brass and percussion. This is the arrangement nearly always seen on stage, and this is the arrangement discerning listeners will expect to hear coming from their speakers. It would be simply incorrect to have the violins sound like they are behind the trombones, or the timpani sound like they are front and center.

With producers, it’s helpful to examine how music is written for different genres. Consider a string quartet. When Telarc recorded the Cleveland Quartet, the group was performing works that were written specifically for the combination of two violins, one viola, and one cello. Every recording of a particular work would contain the same notes played on the same instruments, with the ensemble seeking to create their own interpretations within those seemingly narrow parameters. The producer’s job in this case is to make sure that the ensemble plays the music in a manner that honors the composer’s intentions and fits the musical style in which the work was written, while showcasing the unique musical understanding of the artists. All while playing the correct notes in tune! Telarc’s Thom Moore described it this way: “I’m responsible for collaborating with artists to capture the best representation of their performance we can get. My duties range from the mechanical things—tempi, pitch, phrasing—to discussing the real concept of the piece, the direction it should go, and how we can best achieve overall impact and feeling.”⁶

Somewhat similar to a string quartet, many popular music quartets have two guitars, bass, and drums. But there the similarities end. Maybe it’s a guitar and keyboards instead of two guitars. Songs are sometimes written at the recording sessions. The players might swap parts or even instruments.⁷ Notes may be improvised, instruments added, or keys changed. An artist from another band might join in on a track or two. And if someone else were to record that same song later, they might do so in a completely different way.⁸ The producer has a hand in most or all of these decisions. You might even say that a non-classical producer’s role is creative, whereas a classical producer’s role is recreative. Where they align, though, is in the question every producer is always asking: what is needed to bring forth the artists’ vision and make this the best recording that it can possibly be?

In an interview with Gramophone, conductor Christoph von Dohnanyi describes the usual classical recording session process:[su_quote]We play these pieces in concert before–three times or so–then we record. The session begins, tuning, balancing for the record people, then we start to play the whole piece.⁹ Then we listen to it, have a real break and then I fix the ten or so spots with the orchestra where something has gone wrong, and then we play the piece once again so there is music-making–there’s no cutting and sticking bits together.¹⁰[/su_quote] Session times, pay rates, and even the amount of the final recorded music that can come from each hour of session time is explicitly stated in the orchestra’s union contract.¹¹ For an orchestral recording, there are typically the following people in the control room:

Producer: responsible for guiding the overall recording and making sure that there is at least one good take of everything. They are usually marking up a copy of the musical score as things go along. [tooltips content="Telarc producers used the following marks: E for ensemble issues, I for intonation, N for noises, and R and X for spots that were rough or just not usable."]Editing marks indicate the issue and the take in which it occurred. They are also keeping a close eye on the clock to make sure everything will happen within the allowed timeframe. An assistant producer might be helping with the note-taking and detail-watching.

Engineer: responsible for choosing and placing microphones and making sure the recorded sound is a faithful capture of the sound out in the performance space. An assistant engineer might be helping with the setup and making sure all the recorders are operating properly throughout the session. Everyone is also listening for noises or flubs to make sure they are noted and another take is recorded for that spot.

Orchestra manager:

At playback time, the conductor and several members of the orchestra typically came back to the control room to listen in.

These roles might be split or combined, depending on the session. For a smaller session, such a soloist or chamber music, there are usually fewer people in the control room but they are serving the same functions.

The final part of the classical recording process is editing, or as Dohnanyi put it, “cutting and sticking bits together.” Classical editors make every effort to use long sections of takes and to edit with musical continuity as the top priority. However, it is sometimes necessary to drop in a couple of measures or even a few notes to work around a noise or a flubbed passage. A properly executed edit will be undetectable by even the most discerning listener, so it can sometimes take a good deal of work to accomplish. In the end, the editor strives to create a recording that sounds as if the performers sat down and played the piece from top to bottom with no mistakes of any sort. Debate continues in the classical music community about how much editing is desirable in a recording that is intended to represent such a performance. Canadian pianist Glenn Gould (1932-1982) famously abandoned the concert stage altogether for the recording studio, precisely to gain the advantage of this “cutting and sticking together,” which he discusses eloquently in his essay, “The Prospects of Recording.”¹²

There are a number of books about the techniques of classical recording, and many more on studio recording. Check out this list for some suggested reading.

Last updated on January 31st, 2025 at 06:26 pm

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» Telarc and the Development of Audio Technology

The Recording Academy lists all the nominees and winners on their website. The first year’s laureates are here. ↩︎
Classical producer Leroy Parkins, quoted in Susan Schmidt Horning, Chasing Sound : Technology, Culture, and the Art of Studio Recording from Edison to the LP (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2013), 217 ↩︎
For an in-depth look at the creation of popular music recordings, we recommend Rick Beato’s YouTube channel. Rick, an accomplished musician on several instruments, looks at hit songs from all sorts of interesting angles and goes into amazing detail on what makes them work. ↩︎
Leo L. Beranek, Concert Halls and Opera Houses : Music, Acoustics, and Architecture, 2nd ed. (New York, NY: Springer, 2004), 2. ↩︎
Noted in a tribute to Jack Renner. “For the Record,” Gramophone, September 2019, 8 ↩︎
Quoted in Jason Victor Serinus, “Telarc Scores Big,” Stereophile.com, June 19, 2006 ↩︎
R.E.M. discusses this type of creative chaos in an article about creating their album Green. ↩︎
One great example is Luke Combs’ recent cover of Tracy Chapman’s “Fast Car”. They teamed up to perform a combination of their versions at the 2024 Grammy Awards. ↩︎
Union recording contracts dictate that the engineers have just five minutes with the orchestra playing in order to make sure the sound is correct. After that, any time used for technical adjustments comes out of the forty minutes per hour that is intended for putting down takes. ↩︎
Gramophone, June 1989, quoted in Donald Rosenberg, The Cleveland Orchestra Story : Second to None, 1st ed. (Cleveland: Gray & Company, 2000), 509. ↩︎
This press release details some of the issues that were negotiated as part of the 2019 union agreement with the recording industry. ↩︎
Glenn Gould and Tim Page, The Glenn Gould Reader, 1st ed. (New York: Knopf, 1984). 331-353 (originally published in the April 1966 issue of High Fidelity.) ↩︎