Ancient Meets Modern As Neumann Captures Anacron

Composed in 1754 by Jean-Philippe Rameau - widely recognized with Montever-di and Handel as one of the great trinity of Baroque operatic masters - Anacr on was only performed a handful of times, the last just after his death a decade later. Subsequently the one act comic opera was all-but forgotten, with no complete manuscript surviving.

None of the surviving sources of Anacr on is complete, so reconstructing the score required a lot of detective work, piecing together the music from various scores and parts. And the few sources that do survive originate from three differ-ent productions of two different versions of the opera, says Dr Jonathan Williams of Oxford Universitys Faculty of Music and St Hildas College, who took on the considerable task of reconstructing the score, filling in any missing music in a style indistinguishable from the composer's.

The first full performance of Anacr on in over two and a half centuries took place at Oxford's Sheldonian Theatre, performed by the Orchestra of the Age of En-lightenment with soloists Anna Dennis, Agustin Prunell-Friend and Matthew Brook, Oxford's Magdalen College Choir and the Consort Iridiana choir. It was conducted by Jonathan, with Sennheiser UK's Dave Wooster using an array of Neumann series digital wireless microphones to capture the audio.

Five mics were mounted on an overhead Grace Designs surround tree; three KK183 diffuse omnidirectional capsules at 0 , 90 and 270 , with a pair of KK131 omnidirectional capsules at 165 and 195 . Two floor-mounted TLM103D cardi-oids completed the picture. The Neumann wireless system fed the seven streams of audio, via an RME DMC-842 interface and 164 MADI card, to be recorded on ProTools on a Macbook Pro.

A generic gain structure was applied, which left good headroom to cope with the dynamic range of the performance, while recording a suitable level into the sys-tem, says Dave. It captured a massive range of information, the dynamic range of the Neumann microphones is truly staggering and the surround tree captured an excellent balance from the room below.

I was thrilled to see Dave setting up such amazing gear, says Jonathan. If you want to make a world class recording, every component in the chain has to be world class, because any degradation along the line can be heard in the end re-sult.

Once transferred to the studio, Dave used five Neumann KH120 and two KH810 monitors to do the final mixes.

The dynamic range and zero noise floor of the system meant that I had to do very little in the studio. The main work was positioning and level, with a very small amount of high pass filtering to reduce any unwanted extreme low frequencies, he says. Both the surround and stereo mixes showcase the great dynamic re-sponse of the Neumann system and the wide frequency range that we captured. I was particularly impressed with the low frequencies, as there was only a single double bass in the orchestra.

As a project that was so much more than just the performance, Jonathan was especially pleased that the Neumann system could make an exceptionally accu-rate recording, allowing future generations to enjoy an opera that had been lost' for so long.

I spent two years slowly piecing it together from multiple sources and booked one of the best orchestras in the world to play that kind of music, he says. To hear it played so well was truly gratifying and it was great to know that we would get a superb quality recording to show for it.

The audience loved it and we got great reviews, so it was well worth doing. The fact that others will be also able to appreciate Anacr on after so many years makes the satisfaction even greater!

The digital recording of Anacr on can be downloaded here:

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