Robert Stumpf wrote:

>I recently got a recording of Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsodies with Ivan
>Fischer conducting the Budapest Festival Orchestra on Philips.  After
>listening to it for awhile, I pulled out my Mercury copy with Dorati
>conducting.  Wow!  What a difference!  Both recordings are exemplary but
>so different you might almost believe they are different pieces of music!
>If you want to study how different interpretaions can be equally valid,
>this is a prime example.  It also shows how music is much more than black
>marks on white paper.

Very true.  Both widely differing interpretations such as the ones you
mention may as you say contain valuable insights into the music, and be
"right" in that sense.  A third rendering of the same work may have nothing
to say.  I participated in such a performance recently--of the Chopin E
Minor Concerto.  The only thing I got out of it (as violinist) was a
backache.  (From holding of sustained notes at ppppp dynamic level for a
long period of time!) It's not the orchestra part--we all know that's not
the work's strong point.  It's that the piano part had no color, poetry,
nuance.  Sure, the ritards, rubatos, crescendos were all there.  It's
amazing how it's possible to stick to the letter of interpretation but miss
the spirit entirely.  It's much more important to do SOMETHING along those
lines than it is to to the "right" thing.  A real "authentic" performance
is IMO one in which the performer has transcended the "rules" of correct
interpretation, and assimilated the work according to his or her own depth
of musical understanding, and has communicated that assimilation to the
listener.  All too often a young performer will copy the manner of some
famous artist and miss the point entirely.  They don't understand that what
appears to them as "manner" is the sum of that artist's lifetime of musical
thought and experience, and they seem to think they can bypass all that by
the process of imitation.

Chris Bonds