Don Satz:

>We have all heard about jet-hopping conductors and performers who are
>creating an international standard of performance practices which damage
>the musical idiom of a composer's works.
>
>I never paid much attention to the above notion until a few months ago
>when I attended a chamber music concert.  One of the works performed was
>Dvorak's String Quartet in G major, Opus 106.  The performance was a lovely
>one with superb balance among the instruments, but something was very
>wrong.  Dvorak was made to sound like a sophisticated and urbanized man
>with well-buttoned social conventions.

Well, I hate to bring this up, but Dvorak was sophisticated, at
least musically, and observed those social conventions.  I find such
a performance view perfectly valid and, indeed, a welcome alternative
to the "butcher's boy, warbling his native woodnotes wild" picture of
the composer.

Steve Schwartz