Jocelyn Wang writes:

>Name one "practical problem" that would warrant removal of repeats on
>artistic grounds.

A fair number of correspondents have given you plenty of reasonable
examples.  Unfortunately, you've not made any noticeable attempt to
engage with them.

In my case, I believe you took the line that the performers had no business
to be playing Schubert's Quintet in a Cathedral acoustic.  That really
missed my point entirely as they didn't have a choice in the matter.  You
see, this was a real-life case, in a far from ideal or theoretical setting.

To repeat: in this real case, the "practical problem" of the acoustic
should have led the players to the practical compromise of cutting the
repeats, for everyone's good including Schubert's.  Satisfied?

>Wow.  The composer's dead, therefore living performers have carte blanche
>to mess up their works any way they darned well please.  Oh, yeah, that's
>some reverence for art.

Nobody says such a thing.  And is it not a problem for you when some
tiresome composers pay so little attention to this "reverence" due to their
own work?

Here's Leslie Kinton on Mozart:

>Live performances, however, are a different thing.  I used to be a fanatic
>about always doing all repeats as being the only historically accurate way
>of doing things...  'till I heard no less than Malcolm Bilson point out
>that Mozart himself was quite cavalier about the whole matter, and left
>them in, or took them out according to how the piece would fit the rest of
>the programme.

To which I imagine you'd reply, with Salieri in Pushkin's marvellous little
drama; "Oh Mozart, you are not worthy of yourself!".

Mozart, of course, merely laughs uproariously and asks him where they're
going to have dinner.

Hey ho ...  what's new? I suppose the world will always be divided into
Salieris and Mozarts.

Christopher Webber,  Blackheath, London,  UK.
http://www.nashwan.demon.co.uk/zarzuela.htm
"ZARZUELA!"