Don Satz replied to my rather unreflected comment about 'CD culture':

>I only have favorable feelings about the CD culture, primarily due to
>the permanence factor and lack of extraneous noises.  Also, I do not
>know anyone who is unaware that recordings are 'secondary literature'.
>Certainly, no list member has given me the impression that he/she considers
>recordings "primary'.

Yes, fair point, I was probably once again building a storm in a
water-glass.  What I was thinking about is the fact that many people
today get to know their music entirely from performances and especially
recordings, whereas in the past there was more home music-making and going
to concerts was only a supplement to that.  George Bernard Shaw, for
instance, familiarized himself with Wagner operas and Beethoven symphonies
by playing them himself in piano reductions.

I do think that this culture shift has had an effect on performance
practice: there is a greater emphasis on surface accuracy and a 'safe',
middle-ground interpretation that will give most people a good, solid,
over-all view.  That's also encouraged by the very permanence of recordings
- because daring or spontaneous effects, or more overt highlightings, can
become stale or grating after repeated listening, they tend to be
streamlined out in favour of a less controversial alternative.

Is that a bad thing? Of course there are a huge number of exceptions - it's
one of the positive effects of the CD glut that so many niche markets have
developed for listeners with different requirements - and more conventional
and understated readings have their own virtues, especially once we've
already become familiar with the flashier or more idiosyncratic ones.  My
main concern, I suppose, was that newcomers to serious music will get one
of those non-threatening, mainstream interpretations on the assumption that
this is an objective and reliable representation of the work; they won't
'get' the music because they haven't yet developed the musical imagination
or the ear to hear those points that the performance only hints at; they
will think the music itself is boring - and they will go back to the
theatrics of pop music or Italian opera.

But no doubt that's just another of my assertions from the ivory tower -
it's likely the days are long gone when everybody automatically started
their collection with Karajan's Beethoven, or Boehm's Mozart.  That would
certainly be a big step forward!

Felix Delbruck
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