Bob Draper writes:

>Len Fehskens wrote:
>
>Norman Schwartz writes:
>
>>(1) A superior recording can influence a listener's opinion as to the merit
>>of a performance.
>
>True if the quality of the sound matters more to the listener than the
>quality of the performance.  But less true, I believe, for "sophisticated"
>listeners, especially once the sound quality crosses some threshold.

I've seen this proposition expressed very many times.  But in practice can
it possibly be so? Can you try to compare performance quality of D. Brain
(in older historical recordings) with that of H. Baumann or B. Tuckwell
(in recent analogue or digital recordings)? I can't.  Maybe I'm not
"sophisticated", but how can a rendition of a painting lacking all its true
colors be compared with the original with all its colors expressed vividly?
If you want to add an imagination factor to a recording, I feel you don't
need the recording in the first place.

Norman Schwartz
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