Sound Engineer Vilius Keras has worked on many recent recordings from Delos, including the GRAMMY-nominated Virtuoso Rossini Arias recording featuring Lawrence Brownlee. Below is an excerpt of his recent interview with Primephonic. Have a look, and read it in full at www.primephonic.com.
As a person directly involved in recording European concert music, what are the latest trends you’ve come across in the recent past?
“Firstly, I would say there are two focal areas – artistic and technical – where trends emerge. In terms of artistic trends, I noticed an emerging popularity in the music of Sergei Rachmaninov. Everyone wants to record his works. It doesn’t even matter how many times they’ve been recorded and released in the recent past. I’ve also noticed that usually there aren’t any logical reasons for why different composers become popular; it happens quite accidentally. Someone performed Rachmaninov’s concerto a few times, and all of a sudden everybody wants to play and record it. Such things become apparent when you record various artists.
What about the technical side of it?
“Looking from a technical perspective, I have to single out an increasing dichotomy between vinyl and hi-res audio consumption. The vinyl consumption is particularly interesting, because many people sacrifice the audio quality for the nostalgia that the vinyl consumption brings; many things are wrong with a vinyl if one looks from a technological perspective, but it still sounds pleasant to our ears. On top of that, people love buying vinyls for the visual purposes, and in many houses around the world vinyls are becoming an addition to household decorations. Huge amounts of them are being released every month, whether it’s a reissue of some classic or a new recording. In addition to that, vinyl factory prices are relatively low compared to SACD or hi-res audio files. It is rather significant, because in terms of quality, vinyls are the opposite to high resolution audio, which sits at the other end of this dichotomy trend.
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