I agree that it is a customary and accepted practice to edit both live
and recorded performances, although I think that it is often unnecessary
or even misguided.  It is funny that just as I was reading Mr.  Runnion's
last post, I was listening to Lipatti's recording of the Grieg concerto,
and he hit a clam on a chord in the middle movement.  It didn't really
bother me, and it reminded me that I was listening to not just a
transcription in sound of notes from a page, but a very human performance
of a human work of music.  When I want an electronic reproduction, I'll
pick up the latest music-writing software, type in the notes to the Grieg
concerto with the appropriate instrumentation and directions for tone and
vibrato (if these features are not yet available on Finale- or Sibelius-
type programs, I'm sure future innovations can or will bring them), and sit
back and tell my computer to play it back for me.  Or worse, I'll just go
listen to "Switched-on Bach".

Evgeni Kissin's recital in Chicago in 1998 was an exciting event, hardly
marred by his mistakes in the fugue of the Beethoven sonata.  I'm actually
disappointed to think that if any of his recitals from that or another year
were preserved on disk, that it would be "cleaned-up" and made in my eyes,
more sterile and like a studio recording.  I'd prefer the thousands of live
mistakes by Richter, Cortot, Horowitz, et al.  that we have preserved, to
the sanitized recording and sanitized playing which disgraces many of our
modern recordings.

Michael Cooper