Richard Tsuyuki writes:

>In expanding my music collection lately (it's still pretty basic), I
>have noticed that, listening to different performances of the same work,
>I almost invariably prefer the one I heard first and am most familiar with.
>The preference seems to persist even after repeated listenings of the
>"newer" performance.  This sort of bothers me, as it seems to imply a kind
>of conservative narrowmindedness that I didn't know I possessed.

I am of opinion that the phenomenon known as "imprinting", is actually
universal, and the performance may have been, as it has been said by a
fellow member of the list, the best performance we have heard.

My wife and I have been listening to classical music, both live and
recorded music for 50 years [I still remember using wooden needles (Yes!
wooden!) to play my 78s, and thus destroying most of them!].

I would like to give, as an example, the 1952 recording of the Brahms'
Quintet in B Minor for clarinet & strings, with Leopold Wlach and the
Vienna Konzerthaus Quartet (on Westminster).  Wlach's beautiful playing
of the Quintet, especially the Adagio, caused such an "imprinting" on
our minds, that it has become almost impossible (especially for my wife)
to enjoy other performances.  Since then we have listened to many live
performances of the Clarinet Quintet, and acquired a 1981 stereo LP with
Peter Schmidl and the Members of the New Vienna Octet, two additional CDs
(with Karl Leister with the Brandis Quartett (Nimbus Records), and Jozsef
Balogh with Danublus Quartet (Naxos).

All of them were and are satisfying and even beautiful performances, but we
have always compared them unfavorably (especially the Adagio) with Wlach's
playing and have always returned to the "good old" (now scratched) Wlach.

I have been searching for years for a re-issue of the Clarinet Quintet with
Wlach on a CD (without any success).

Zeev Schor   E-mail: [log in to unmask]
Israel