Requiem for an Orchestra (2)

Nearly forty three years ago when I came to Vancouver the CBC studio was in the centre of town in an old building that has since been demolished. The acoustics weren’t good, neither was the recording. Money (or the lack of it) was a big issue. As principal bass I had to play all the difficult solos such as Per Questa Bella Mano and the Ginastera Variaciones often with only one “take”. There was no time for balancing and listening to it and much of the time when I listened to it over the radio I was dissatisfied. I don’t know how Avison, the conductor managed to handle the strain but he did, and as a result he was often bad-tempered due to nerves.

When they built a new CBC centre including a then state of the art studio we in the orchestra thought that things were improving. But they weren’t, they went steadily downhill.