Steve Schwartz objects to Denis Fodor's view that great orchestras should
stick to their traditional specialities, writing:

>I really do believe it's a terrible mistake to give one's approval to
>what is, at bottom, aesthetic and intellectual laziness.

This view is not at all surprising and I think it's legitimate.  But I
don't agree with it and this being an expressivist world, I'm sticking to
my own view on this matter.  What I take as the traditional canons of,say,
Vienna, Berlin, Milan, Rome, Naples, St.  Petersburg and Mosocw are in
every case so broad, so faceted and yet so nicely defined that they allow
musicians plenty of room, but not a surfeit of it, to indulge their art.
If that's not enough, they're also vouchsafed time of their own to play
other things elsewhere.  But when I want to hear,say, surpassingly
well-played Schubert, I should like to be able to be certain of getting it
in Vienna.  Celi here in Munich could play a mean Mussorgsky, but I still
think the places to expect to hear the paradigm are St.  Petersburg and
Moscow.  That's the way it should be, IMO, and in order for it to be so the
great orchestras should be drilled, without surcease, to the canon of their
tradition.  And need I add, drilled by conductors steeped in that
tradition.

Denis Fodor                     Internet:[log in to unmask]