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| A new concept in music enjoyment: listening with the audience |
Orchestral Concert CDs is devoted to issuing recordings of live concert performances, primarily by leading Eastern European orchestras.
During the 1960s and early 1970s, Geoffrey Terry was invited to tour the UK with orchestras and ensembles from Eastern Europe. Fortunately, as a recording engineer, he was granted the opportunity to make recordings of some of the concerts for posterity. It is from those original tapes that the Virtual Concert Hall Series of CDs has been derived. More than a dozen exceptional CDs have already been published, and the range of available recordings is expected to expand in the months to come.
The recordings originate from a series of concerts given by leading European orchestras such as the Prague Symphony Orchestra, Brno Philharmonic Orchestra, Hungarian State Symphony Orchestra, Berliner Staatskapelle, Leipzig Gewandhaus Bach Orchestra and others during their tours of the UK, together with world-class ensembles, soloists and conductors.
The technical theory behind the recordings, CNSTR, is very simple: considering that the concert-goer has only two ears, just two microphones were positioned in very carefully selected locations. The balance and dynamics were left entirely in the capable hands of the musicians; in many commercial recordings, sound engineers override the conductor’s directions and constantly adjust up to 64 microphones. In the Virtual Concert Hall Series recordings, no adjustments have been made to the dynamics; nor have electronic modifications such as reverberation been added. What the listener hears is a pure acoustic mirror image of the original performance.
The warm, unmistakable atmosphere of sitting with the audience.
Major Announcement
November 2011
With immediate effect…
The entire range of Orchestral Concert CDs issues has now been commercially pressed to top professional standards of manufacturing quality, and rereleased under the new “Virtual Concert Hall Series” branding.
Previously, the CDs were created on demand by Geoffrey Terry, and were supplied almost exclusively through this site. A recent large order from a distributor, however, provided the financial impetus and incentive to have the discs commercially pressed. They are therefore now available in the same physical format as any other commercial CD, and the opportunity has been taken to provide consistently designed booklets and artwork across the range.
This site has been fully updated to reflect the new range of CDs, which are now supplied shrink-wrapped with clear inner trays and professionally designed, full-colour printed materials throughout. The same designer who created the site has also created the new CDs, ensuring perfect consistency throughout the Orchestral Concert CDs branding.
Also now available is a newly updated FREE Sampler CD, containing an extended, high quality excerpt from each CD in the current range of fourteen discs. Physical copies may be ordered at a low price to cover materials and postage, or the entire disc may be downloaded from this site, including printable inlays and disc label in the same style as the rest of the new range.
Site last updated: 4th January 2012