'SDG Live on the Night' makes BBC TV news

An update on John Eliot Gardiner's SDG Live On the Night which I wrote about in an earlier post. SDG are recording the first half of concerts by the English Baroque Soloists and the Monteverdi Choir, and are then burning the unedited recording to CD in the second half for sale to the audience for £10 ($18 US) at the end of the concert.

The CDs are copied at the venue with technology developed by production company Floating Earth for pop concerts.The CD label and inlay are preprinted. The copying is done on a bank of nine CD drives at 52 times speed. This means it takes just over a minute to copy nine CDs, the total run for each release is limited to 3000. At the first concert on Thursday in the Cadogan Hall in London where SDG Live on the Night was offered around half the audience bought the CDs. The recordings can also be bought after the concert from the SDG web site.

I've just heard the finale of the Jupiter Symphony recorded live on Friday night in the Cadogan Hall and sold to the audience at the end of the concert. I have to say it is very impressive. Fantastically atmospheric and electric performance, superb sound, and no really distracting fluffs or coughs, with the pauses between movements edited down.

SDG's PR machine has done a splendid job, and got the story onto the BBC's TV's main evening news programme last night, a very rare achievement for classical music.

Well done SDG. Shows there are other ways than free downloads to catch an audience for classical music.

Image credit - Resmuisca.com
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If you enjoyed this post take An Overgrown Path to Soli Deo Gloria.

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