Steve Schwartz writes: >I talk to professional musicians, some of whom help program repertoire. >I don't generalize here, but it shocks me to find out how little music some >of them know - not just 20th-century music, but music from the "warhorse" >periods as well. They know very little Max Bruch, for example, other than >the Scottish Fantasy, the Kol Nidre, and the g-minor violin concerto, and >they seem to have little curiosity about anything else. They know the last >three or four Tchaikovsky symphonies, but not the first two. They've never >heard of the Brahms Triumphlied. It's no longer a mystery to me why we >get the same pieces year after year, and it has very little to do with the >concern for keeping Monuments of Western Culture alive. I don't mind the >concert hall as a museum. I mind that it's an extremely tiny museum. A good point and yet another reason for relying on recorded music. If we as listeners have a healthy desire to explore off the beaten path, the unbeaten path leads very often to Tower Records or some .com equivalent. It is a safe bet that deference to the assumed narrow tastes of the audience also plays a role, as does (and this goes back to Steve's point) the narrow repertory of many star soloists. Perhaps too the restricted repertory reflects a path of least resistance in a time of long seasons, tours, summer commitments, and relatively limited rehearsal time. But let us face it: the enthusiasts on this list are not typical of the concert audience. The "typical" audience member may, for all I know, be smarter, richer, nicer than the average list member, but is not as intensely interested in exploration as many, probably most, of us are. Professor Bernard Chasan Physics Department, Boston University