hear classical music as it would have sounded 200 years ago
From McGill University’s Centre for Interdisciplinary Research in Music Media and Technology comes a path-breaking project. Performer Tom Beghin, sound engineer and producer Martha de Francisco, and sound architect Wieslaw Woszczyk apply VIRTUAL ACOUSTICS for the first time to a music recording of this magnitude. Tom Beghin plays Joseph Haydn’s complete works for solo keyboard with the imagination and creativity expected of the most accomplished 18th-century keyboardist. Seven period instruments have been newly constructed to match those that Haydn and his contemporaries would have used. The sound characteristics of nine historical rooms in which Haydn’s music would have been performed have been acoustically measured, electronically mapped, then precisely recreated in the recording laboratory and reproduced with the newest surround-sound recording techniques and virtual acoustics technologies. All these recordings were executed in a studio in Montreal, demonstrating that it is now possible to perform and record “virtually” in any acoustics of one’s choosing, from anywhere and from any time: you'd swear you were actually there. “The Virtual Haydn” has been hailed by the international press as "landmark" (BBC Music Magazine) or "one of the most audacious recording enterprises in recent memory” (blu-ray.com). Maclean's adds: "You've never heard Haydn like this." The project is available in record stores as a 4 Blu-ray disc box-set, under the Naxos record label.
