Dear Reader,

It is my great pleasure to tell you something about the wonderful cooperation between the Amsterdam Symphony Orchestra and Ad van Medevoort's company Audioart.

Ad and his colleagues Onno Scholtze and Marcel Croese have been recording our concerts for some years now. For them it is a great way to test their microphones, experiment with microphone placement and to really analyse how their - state of the art - recording equipment behaves under different circumstances. For us it is very valuable to have our concerts recorded for our archives and for reference purposes.

It's very interesting to see what Ad and his highly professional colleagues want to achieve. They are constantly looking for a very objective, unaltered and exact rendition of what happens on stage and in the concert hall. When we listen back to the recordings Onno Scholtze always asks me whether what I hear coming out of the loudspeakers is what I hear when I'm conducting. Unfortunately I must disappoint him by saying that I listen very differently to the orchestra while conducting than when I sit in an easy chair in a room. Still, I think Ad and his colleagues do manage to capture the closeness, liveliness and directness which one might experience on stage. What I find extremely exciting is to hear what effect the hall has on the overall sound. We made some recordings while playing the same pieces in different halls (the microphone placement is exactly the same wherever we went) and the differences in sound colour and quality were enormous!

The fact that they only use two tiny microphones - placed just behind and above my head - which pick up both the direct sound coming from the orchestra and the reverberation from the hall makes the recording very 'true'. The balance I make in the orchestra is the balance you hear on the recording. This of course is sometimes frustrating for me because I can't change anything afterwards in case the balance is off or a wrong or false note is audible (sometimes I longed back to the 'jungle' of microphones which you could all manipulate individually). Still, while cooperating with Ad I have become sure of the fact that the transparency and quality of sound on a recording is more valuable than having a 'perfect' recording. Life is live and perfect is dead!

I thank Ad and his team for the nice times we spent together and I'm longing for many more exciting hours with these top audio professionals!

Peter Sánta
Artistic Director and Principal Conductor
Amsterdam Symphony Orchestra

Amsterdam Symphony Orchestra
Prinsengracht 699
1017 JV Amsterdam
The Netherlands
Tel: +31-(0)20-521 04 30
Fax: +31-(0)20-521 04 31
E-mail: info@amsterdamsymphony.com
Internet: www.amsterdamsymphony.com