Bob Draper:

>I have been surprised at the way some list members are so obsessed
>with purchasing multiple copies of the same work in order to
>chase that dream of  a performance of absolute perfection.

I must admit I used to think as Bob does.  My priority was to hear what
I hadn't heard before.  I would say that's still my primary reason for
collecting.  However, I've since found three reasons for collecting
different performances than Bob has come up with.

1.  No version satisfies me.  Therefore, I keep looking.  This is, for
example, the case with me and Mahler's 7th and Brahms's German Requiem.

2.  This has been mentioned by others.  Certain works, I've discovered,
take multiple viewpoints.  It's like hearing a new work, because the
music reveals different facets under the insights of different performers.
For me, this is true of the Bach cantatas, much of Bach's keyboard music,
Beethoven's sonatas, string quartets, and symphonies, Brahms's symphonies
and chamber music, Sibelius symphonies, Elgar's symphonies, Mahler's
symphonies, the works of Richard Strauss and Vaughan Williams, and
Shostakovich's symphonies.

3.  There are also performers who almost invariably bring something
strikingly individual to whatever they do and what they do interests
me: Szell, Mitropoulos, Scherchen, Furtwaengler, Dohnanyi, Eschenbach,
Sinopoli, Horenstein, Tureck, Istomin, Bernstein, Gould, Koussevitzky,
Stokowski, Welser-Moest, Argerich, Kremer, Janet Baker, Ian Partridge,
Benjamin Luxon, Landowska, Mengelberg, Gielen, and so on.  Live performers
(ie, no CDs) include conductors Klauspeter Seibel and James Paul, both of
whom I think underrated.  Seibel to me is a great conductor who's never
had access to a great orchestra, much like Horenstein through most of
his career.  It's kind of analogous to jazz and pop.  I'd buy an Ella
Fitzgerald, Art Tatum, or Bill Evans anything.  Just because I like Billy
Holiday's "Embraceable You" doesn't mean I don't want to hear the early
Judy Garland's.

Of course, a fellow can go broke indulging multiple habits.

Steve Schwartz