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Maybe I'm a Luddite, but. . .

Posted by Chris from Lafayette (A) on April 10, 2007 at 15:10:19

In Reply to: "New" Conductors: New Interpretations or New MUSIC?... posted by SE on April 10, 2007 at 04:37:13:

. . . I can't get enough different points of view of the "standard repertoire". And although there are new contemporary works that I like (Pärt, Ligeti - oops maybe Ligeti doesn't count anymore since he recently joined the "Dead White European Males" club), I also find the majority of new music pretty cheezy - and that includes wide swaths of Glass and Adams. In fact, the last living composer whose new works I was actually EAGER to hear was Joaquin Rodrigo!

Maybe it's because I come from a time when the "post-Webern" aesthetic ruled the universities and concert halls, but I've seen too many audiences burned by the unwillingness of contemporary composers (especially of the "post-Webern" style - which was being pushed down our throats when I was in school) to meet them halfway. And I won't even mention the absurd hubris and self-righteousness of these composers ("the world owes me a living" - wasn't it Milton Babbitt who was demanding that kind of unquestioned support from us peones as far back as 1958 - even though his article was couched in the obsurantist language of scholasticism so as to hide the bald-faced arrogance of its meaning?).

Although I don't share Todd's enthusiasm for Charles Dutoit (below), there are plenty of other conductors around nowadays whom I would trust to conjure new insights and meanings from the standard repertoire: Skrowaczewski, Vänskä, Pletnev (on a good day), and, yes, Salonen - and lots more!

You said:

Are we -- as fans and concert-goers and collectors of recordings -- seeking, really, ANYONE to continue to perform the "old classics" which we have heard in spades. I mean, if I want animated/unique Beethoven or Bruckner or Shostakovich I know exactly where to look. OK, it is DEFINITELY arguable that we don't need more/new RECORDINGS of mainstay works (IMO)

I couldn't disagree more - partially for the reason above (i.e., that there are always new insights waiting to be discovered in great music). I mean, really, what if someone had shared your opinions in, say, the 1950's - claiming, for example, that we have all the great Chopin playing we need in the recordings of Rubinstein, Cortot, Friedman, Rosenthal, etc, etc. So I guess with an outlook like this, one needn't bother with Chopin performers who came later (Argerich, Moravec, Zimmermann, etc, etc)? (Or maybe they should play only new music? - Come to think of it, a Moravec performance of some of the Ligeti Etudes might be very interesting!) :-)

But even aside from this, I feel that the engineering on modern recordings has the potential of getting us closer and closer to the totality of the interpreters' conception. Although there are counter-progressive tendencies at work in modern recordings (the plethora of microphones for one thing!), we still have examples in recent years of recording/engineering standards which would have been unattainable in years past. For me, these engineering standards brings us listeners ever closer to the heart of the performance, as we hear the nuances and tone qualities which simply could not be captured in older recordings. For this reason too, I can't imagine confining future recording activities to new works only (not that I think this would ever happen).

Just my opinion.

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