Len Fehskens wrote:

>One recurring position I heard was "repeats served a useful purpose when
>music was being heard for the first time, but now that the music is so
>familiar, they're useless/irrelevant".  This is a variation of "the
>composer knows best", i.e., "the composer knew best then, but this is now".

Not at all.  The composer could never have imagined a time would come
when the music would become so familiar.  The repeats were there to help
listeners to follow the structure of unfamiliar music.  Nowdays that
argument doesn't hold.  However, if an interpreter cares to create an
interpretation wherein the first runthrough is played straight, and the
repeat is a variant in terms of -- emphasis, phrasing? -- that might be
a worthwhile experiment.

Bill S