Thanh-Tam Le <[log in to unmask]> writes:

>To the point, I agree that the vast majority of repeats should not be
>suppressed -- I am often frustrated not to hear many of them.  But none
>of them, not ever?

I'm sorry to re-enter the lists, but I find Thanh-Tam Le's pragmatic good
sense a breath of fresh air in an argument which has got all too much in
common with a debate about angels on heads of pins.

If the Fundamental Repeaters consider Steve Schwartz's Kazoo Eroica too
frivolous an example - though I for one would pay at least a sou or two to
hear such a thing - how about this one I gave to Jocelyn Wang in a private
post?

I once heard the Schubert C Major Quartet, performed of necessity in a
cavernous cathedral as part of a memorial service.  It was given with all
repeats intact by a top-class groups of players, and the results were ...
well, unpalatable to put it mildly.

This work has been a bit of a repeats test case over the years, and in most
cases we'd doubtless agree that it's up to the performers to observe them,
and do their best to make sense out of Schubert's "heavenly" length.  But
there are clearly circumstances - and this was most certainly one - where
discretionary cuts are much the better part of valour.

Unless, that is, the Fundamental Repeaters would prefer to ban all
performances of Schubert's Quintet from large and cavernous spaces -
which seems to me an utterly untenable position.

Christopher Webber,  Blackheath, London,  UK.
http://www.nashwan.demon.co.uk/zarzuela.htm
"ZARZUELA!"