Bruce Alan Wilson:

>IMHO, one can never hear a symphony by Brahms or Beethoven too many times;

IMHO, of course you can, and it does no service to either composer.
However, we do tend to confuse our personal music needs with the needs of
everybody else.  In New Orleans, for example, I suspect that every time the
LA Phil does Beethoven's Fifth, a significant part of the audience hasn't
heard the piece before.  Even so, why not do the second, or one of the
Romances for violin or the Elegaic Song or the complete incidental music
from Egmont, the Ruins of Athens, or King Stephen? Why is so much
programming the equivalent of Top Forty radio?

Steve Schwartz