Mike Leghorn wrote: >Composers aren't necessarily the best exponent of their own music. This is new to me. I can't think of any reason why Rachmaninov is not the best exponent of his own music. If Rachmaninov were a lousy pianist, then we would turn to more skilled performers but he could still be asked if he accepts the understanding of his music by those other virtuosos. But Rachmaninov was among the best pianists of the century (here I rely on the opinion of other listeners and critics because I haven't listened to much of him to form my own opinion). What did he lack to be not the best performer of his own music? Donald Satz wrote: >I'm not talking about the composer's "world" in terms of the social >environment as much as the composer's inner world of thought and emotion. Well, your understanding of the composer's world is not narrow then. There are people who prefer HIP recordings partly because of the reproduction of the sounds the composer presumably heard. So sometimes arguments like "Bach played his works on the harspsichord" (or even more strictly: "he composed for the harpsichord") are used to ground the position that performance on any other instrument cannot ensure the identification with the composer's personality or musical idiom. I don't agree with this, of course, and understand that you don't agree with this either but then another questions arises: if you demand the mentioned qualities from the performers, isn't it possible that the performers understand the composer's world in their own way? It's a subjective thing, up to the point that you seldom see a professional musician enjoying performances of his colleagues. I know there are many exceptions to this but generally if a person has devoted enough time to master a certain musical piece, he will be very, very picky when selecting interpretations of others to praise and enjoy. We have thousands of different renditions of a piece by artists who can swear by anything that's dear to them that they understood the composer best. So, Don, if in your opinion, strict objective reproduction of the composer's world isn't the way to go, don't you think that the problem you raise in this thread does not exist as everyone is doing their best already? Juozas Rimas Jr (not the one playing) http://www.mp3.com/juozasrimas (oboe, piano, strings)