Jan Templiner replies to my rhetorical question: >>Curious that no one thinks it's meaningful to ask "what's the best >>picture of Michaelangelo's David?". Why is music any different? > >Because music is "happening" whereas a painting just "is". Well, Michaelangelo's David is a sculture, not a painting, and the analogy hinges on the three dimensionality of sculpture and the two dimensionality of a photograph. Flawed as this analogy is (and it is, I admit, quite flawed), I would argue that the fact that music takes place over time is irrelevant. Unless you subscribe to the notion that there is a single "perfect", for all time, interpretation of the notes of the score, the idea that a recording of one performance could play that role, or even aspire to that role, is as meaningful as assuming that there is some single ideal perspective from which a sculpture could be photographed. len.