My contribution to name dropping:  Pianist Nojima.

Additional thoughts:  The logic of this flawed argument seems to go
something like:  Music is always an expression of a particular culture,
and therefore there is always some "essence" to a performance that cannot
be captured by someone outside the culture.  (The other implication is
that this outsider cannot possibly bring anything new to the music, again
because of the unbreakable link between a musical work and the culture
which produced it.) So Americans (especially Anglos) can't ever learn to
participate in African drumming, white musicians can't "really" do blues,
the Beastie Boys can't rap? Oversimplifications and weak analogies,
perhaps--but it's the same idea.  Hidden behind it all is the idea of
music and art as proprietaries of culture.  Even Europe is divided
against itself:  The French "can't" perform Brahms; the Germans "can't"
play Debussy and Ravel.  Nobody plays Johann Strauss like the Vienna
Philharmonic, etc.  Yet some American critic (for example) comes along
and presumes to know enough about BOTH "stylistic essences" to decide
what constitutes an "authentically French (or German)" performance.
What nonsense.  What a colossal waste of time.

I believe that a musical work does have certain style features that
require a particular manner of execution, and it's the performer's
responsibility to understand those style features very thoroughly.  That,
after all, is the noble purpose behind the "HIP" phenomenon.  I also
believe that it's a mistake to be too rigid about the whole process--older
interpretations may be out of favor (I marvelled at how "old-fashioned"
August Wenziger's performance of Marin Marais' viola da gamba pieces on
the old Archiv recording sounded to my ear, not having heard them in some
30 years), but that doesn't imply that they no longer have anything to say
to us.

Another point is that it's helpful to be aware of our own tastes, which
are the "final filter" in judging the "cultural fidelity" of a performance.
I may not care for Herreweghe's performance of Brahms motets, but I neither
think it's because they don't sound "German" enough, nor do I consider it
a mark of personal virtue that I don't care for them.  It's probably my
loss that I have a blind spot to them.

Thus there is no mystical cultural essence that can only be divined by one
who is born into a culture, and there is no genetic disposition toward a
particular musical style.  It's well-established that the earlier one
learns the stylistic cues of a music culture the more "natural" one's
execution will be, however.  But anyone with a little talent can do that,
anywhere, given the right teachers and exposure.

Do you think that a German pianist playing Beethoven is thinking all the
time he or she is playing, "what a marvelous expression of my culture this
music is!" Maybe on some distant, unconscious level, but it's more likely
they're just trying to play well, just like their Asian or African-American
counterpart.  When one chooses to learn classical European-tradition music,
one takes on the yoke of responsibility to learn the appropriate styles of
performing.

Where I think the cultural-difference thing does make a difference is in
more basic things like a concept of rhythm and meter.  African drumming,
for example to Western ears seems to have a pulse you can tap your foot to,
complex as it is.  But Africans don't hear it that way.  As far as I know,
they hear it as a complex set of interlocking communal patterns that have
no common reference to an external pulse.  In other words, they're not
keeping clock-time as much as they are combining linear patterns with each
other.  There's no such thing as a "downbeat" in African drumming.  Someone
from that tradition who wanted to understand how to play Beethoven would
have to learn a new way of thinking about musical time.  It would take some
determination.  But to say it can't be done BECAUSE one is not from that
culture would be a mistake.

Chris Bonds