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I think classical music is one of the big recording challenges. You have great recording engineers like Kenneth Wilkerson, who did so many of the great Decca recordings. EMI recording engineers also knew what they were doing and produced some great recordings (Stephen Bishop is one I can think of). I cherish these recordings. The Solti Wagner "Ring" Cycle on Decca is a monument to the creative recording art, a way of exploiting the possibility of stereo in recreating a 3D stage event. Then you have hacks like John McClure of Columbia. As famous as Columbia was for jazz recordings, the classical recordings (in general) were terrible. They recorded so many great conductors (Szell, Bernstein, etc.) and not so great conductors but great composers (Stravinsky, for example), with a fantastically deep and rich catalog, but the recording quality left so much to be desired. Almost criminal.

I know very little about the art of recording, but the little I (think) I understand is multimiking became a panacea that allowed recording engineers and producers to correct for balance, spotlighting, and reducing the number of takes needed to produce a recording. Paying 100 musicians by the hour is a very expensive if a retake is needed. With multimiking and multitracking, an engineer/producer can correct a performance after the fact (like a blown solo) by mixing in a retake with just the musicians involved or a cut from another take. It is difficult to see how this can be done while preserving the qualities we cherish as audiophiles such as realism and soundstage captured by a minimalist single take recording. I think it takes alot of skill to carry this off successfully.

David

If you have Qobuz, check out the quality of this recording done in 1962.

https://www.qobuz.com/us-en/album/dmitr ... ei53x6nazb

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Walt