Steve Schwartz writes:

>I talk to professional musicians, some of whom help program repertoire.
>I don't generalize here, but it shocks me to find out how little music some
>of them know - not just 20th-century music, but music from the "warhorse"
>periods as well.  They know very little Max Bruch, for example, other than
>the Scottish Fantasy, the Kol Nidre, and the g-minor violin concerto, and
>they seem to have little curiosity about anything else.  They know the last
>three or four Tchaikovsky symphonies, but not the first two.  They've never
>heard of the Brahms Triumphlied.  It's no longer a mystery to me why we
>get the same pieces year after year, and it has very little to do with the
>concern for keeping Monuments of Western Culture alive.  I don't mind the
>concert hall as a museum.  I mind that it's an extremely tiny museum.

A good point and yet another reason for relying on recorded music.
If we as listeners have a healthy desire to explore off the beaten
path, the unbeaten path leads very often to Tower Records or some .com
equivalent.  It is a safe bet that deference to the assumed narrow tastes
of the audience also plays a role, as does (and this goes back to Steve's
point) the narrow repertory of many star soloists.  Perhaps too the
restricted repertory reflects a path of least resistance in a time of long
seasons, tours, summer commitments, and relatively limited rehearsal time.
But let us face it:  the enthusiasts on this list are not typical of the
concert audience.  The "typical" audience member may, for all I know,
be smarter, richer, nicer than the average list member, but is not as
intensely interested in exploration as many, probably most, of us are.

Professor Bernard Chasan
Physics Department, Boston University