Deryk Barker wrote:

>No, the performer performs and the listener takes what (s)he can/wants to
>from the performance.  What I hear as poetic you may not and vice-versa.

Is this not an underestimation of what an artist does? And in a sense a
degradation of a musical perfomance? Making it into something comparable
to an inkblot from a Rorschach-test?

Again, this would mean that the geniuses are not the musicians but their
audience.  If beauty were in the eye of the beholder the listener would be
the creator of the beauty of the music of Bach.  The notes scribbled down
by the historical Bach would be no more than a coat rack on which the
listeners hang the beauty they create in their own minds.

Let's take a step back and look at the problem from another angle.  I am
not a great fan of the music of John Field.  And there nothing in the tome
with the nocturnes of Field in my possession that contains "my kind" of
poetry.  On the contrary, Field is inanity incarnated, as far as I am
concerned.  Does this also mean that what Field writes is "in fact"
unpoetical? I tend to believe that my powers don't reach that far.  I
cannot make Field's music unpoetical simply by not liking his kind of
poetry.

This raises the question: how does one know that Field's nocturnes are in
fact poetical if one does not perceive them as being poetical? The answer
is simple, at least at first sight (the devil is in the details, as so
often): Field intended them to be poetical and the form and content of
his music leave no doubt about these intentions.

The same goes for performers.  Gould's intentions are often far from
poetical as the form and content of his playing show.  For exemple, he does
nothing to help Wagner's music for piano sound any better than it in fact
is.  Gidon Kremer can be as crude in showing the music he performs in all
its nakedness.  Duchable is another kind of artist.  He intends under all
circumstances to play poetically, like Mischa Dichter - look at the form
and content of their playing.

The same goes for Duchable's recording of Chopin: the poetical intentions
and corresponding form and content are unmistakingly there (and it is up
to the listener to like it or not); the notes are sometimes more or less
there; and Plasson is never completely where he should be.

In other words, I agree with the adagium: de gustibus non est disputandum
(it makes no sense to discuss taste).  Either one likes Barbara Bonney or
one doesn't.  But it makes no sense to DENY that the Barbara Bonney one
doesn't like is "in fact" Barbara Bonney.

Regards, Henk