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How is a piano recorded?

What prompted this question is this afternoon's activity: going to the mall, an obligatory task of being a husband, we entered through Nordstrom. As the habit of Nordstrom is, they usually have a pianist play a baby grand near their escalators in the middle of the store. So while my better half was browsing, my son and I watched the pianist.
From a certain distance, I certainly couldn't localize where the lower register or the upper register or anything in between was, the piano sounded as a whole, singular unit. However, that's not the case in many recordings, at least what I have: the piano is spread wide b/w l & r speakers. Is this the result of close-miking the piano? I wonder why the rec engrs don't make it more like real live, but I have no experience or skill or any background in recording so I don't know. What are the considerations for close miking like this?
yr44

Showing 1 response by jeffreybehr

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jeffreybehr
805 posts
 
Most solo-piano recordings are done with the lid off and with the microfones either facing the pianist or his/her back. That's why we get upper frequencies on one side and lower frequencies on the other side of the soundstage. I own very few solo-piano recordings, but one I can recommend and which has some but not lots of the above-described 'stereoness', is by Mieczyslaw Horszowski (whew!), Nonesuch 9 79160-2, named something like 'Mozart/Chopin/Debussy/Beethoven'. It contains 2 Chopin nocturnes, o. 15 #2 (my fave) and o. 27 #2, plus Debussy's Children's Corner plus Beethoven's Piano Sonata #2, o. 2 #2. It was recorded digitally by Max Wilcox, usually NOT one of my favorite balance engineers, but this time he got it right, IMO. The piano has a VERY nice tonality and presence that sounds quite real at correct levels without being too forward.

I believe the CD is out of print--at least I couldn't find it among other Horszowski recordings at Tower--but I recently found 2 copies on Amazon.
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