Rooms for improvement

摘要

Listening recently to my much-loved Haitink/LPO recording of Stravinsky's Firebird, I was severely disconcerted at the point in Kashchei's 'Infernal Dance' where two brass fanfares are normally separated by a brief interlude, because the brassy tones continued right across the 2 1/2 sec gap, completely overwhelming the delicate intervening material. But the aberration was soon explained by the wail of an ambulance siren receding into the distance.