Don Satz replied to my rather unreflected comment about 'CD culture': >I only have favorable feelings about the CD culture, primarily due to >the permanence factor and lack of extraneous noises. Also, I do not >know anyone who is unaware that recordings are 'secondary literature'. >Certainly, no list member has given me the impression that he/she considers >recordings "primary'. Yes, fair point, I was probably once again building a storm in a water-glass. What I was thinking about is the fact that many people today get to know their music entirely from performances and especially recordings, whereas in the past there was more home music-making and going to concerts was only a supplement to that. George Bernard Shaw, for instance, familiarized himself with Wagner operas and Beethoven symphonies by playing them himself in piano reductions. I do think that this culture shift has had an effect on performance practice: there is a greater emphasis on surface accuracy and a 'safe', middle-ground interpretation that will give most people a good, solid, over-all view. That's also encouraged by the very permanence of recordings - because daring or spontaneous effects, or more overt highlightings, can become stale or grating after repeated listening, they tend to be streamlined out in favour of a less controversial alternative. Is that a bad thing? Of course there are a huge number of exceptions - it's one of the positive effects of the CD glut that so many niche markets have developed for listeners with different requirements - and more conventional and understated readings have their own virtues, especially once we've already become familiar with the flashier or more idiosyncratic ones. My main concern, I suppose, was that newcomers to serious music will get one of those non-threatening, mainstream interpretations on the assumption that this is an objective and reliable representation of the work; they won't 'get' the music because they haven't yet developed the musical imagination or the ear to hear those points that the performance only hints at; they will think the music itself is boring - and they will go back to the theatrics of pop music or Italian opera. But no doubt that's just another of my assertions from the ivory tower - it's likely the days are long gone when everybody automatically started their collection with Karajan's Beethoven, or Boehm's Mozart. That would certainly be a big step forward! Felix Delbruck [log in to unmask]