I write:

>there really is still no substitute for live music.

Bert writes:

>>With respect to John for commendable courage, IMO this confirms my
>>reluctance to articulate *how* live music is preferable.  Maybe it
>>just can't be done.

Actually, I've made no secret that I prefer recorded music; even
with access to the SF Symphony, and as an orchestral piano player
in Sacramento's Camellia Symphony, I can't hear everything I want to
hear live, so ironically live music will have to remain the enrichment
experience rather than the other way around.  I've just been routinely
astonished at how different all the sounds "feel" live.

>>Too visceral to put into words, yes, but contemporary works that
>>deliberately play up the spatial dimension of musical experiences
>>may be a special case.

True, but beyond music that incorporates spacial effects, there's
technique as earth-bound as 1st and 2nd violin antiphonal chattering for
instance, that I've never caught on record--it's taken hearing Martinu or
Mozart live to catch such things.

>>Persuasion might, in the end, require hiring a musical ensemble to play
>>live in the skeptic's house, freeing them for a comparison in the
>>absence....

So true.  It seems to me that most people's problems with live music are
audience-sided rather than performance-sided.

John Smyth