James Kearney wrote:

>This time round, one hundred and fifteen messages have appeared so far.
>Only two hundred and sixty two more and we can beat the record!

Well, then, I might as well jump back in!  First of all, Steve, I am
familiar with the CD you mentioned, very familiar.  I believe the group in
question took all the repeats!:-) I'm curious, though, because you didn't
elaborate on your comments, which referred more to composers' intent rather
than just repeats.  Did you notice things in the Shostakovich that seemed
to go against the written instructions on the page? There were a few, but
I'm not telling (yet).

Thinking about the repeat issue, I want to reiterate that in performance,
I have been known to make exceptions to the repeat rule.  It doesn't happen
much, but it does sometimes happen (and I always apologize privately to the
composer).  In Shubert, for instance, if you take all those repeats, the
performance is looooooooong.  This is fine, but may in reality tax some
listeners who are less hard-core than Jocelyn about repeats.  Anyway, what
I was just thinking is perhaps explaining a bit about repeats in the
program notes to a concert.  For instance, for a Shubert trio, perhaps one
could explain the tradition of repeats, explain exactly what they are and
how they fit into the structure, and that the performance is extended.  If
I as an audience member know all that going into a performance, perhaps I
might be encouraged to sit back a bit, dream a bit more, be more aware of
the large structures of the work and the context of the repeats in the
composer's time, and not be quite so bored/impatient by hearing all this
all over again.

David Runnion
www.serafinotrio.com