Some recent threads, such as the Old Favourites one, have prompted me to wonder whether we are now too obsessed with recordings compared with the experience of live performance, whether through attending concerts/operas or radio broadcasts. Discussion here devoted to recordings hugely outweighs that devoted to R3 or live concerts (except perhaps during the Proms season). And this just reflects the fact that the way most of us experience music day to day is far more through the medium of recording, with attendance at live concerts occasional rather than frequent. But does that mean that we are moving away from the idea of music as a purely live, unrepeatable performance as it has been envisaged down the ages by composers and experienced by most audiences at least until well into the last century? Have we become slaves to the flawless, clean studio recording, unreasonably searching for the perfect performance ("Building a Library")?
I don't want to knock recordings - how could I? Most of the music I know and love I first heard through recordings. They allow us to hear far more music, including unfamiliar music, than we could simply through going to concerts or listening to broadcasts (even on internet radio). They provide an archive of performances by great musicians of the past, with access to a huge range of different performance styles. But there are downsides. One is that some works simply become too well known - something that could not have been the case in the time of Beethoven - and another is that if a recording is infinitely repeatable it progressively removes any element of unpredictability about the performance, which at least the live performance has.
When I first got interested in classical music, aeons ago, the excitement of the discovery of the music was everything. I couldn't care who the performers were, indeed I often couldn't remember that. Later on, I became interested in who was performing, started comparing recordings, started putting some on a pedestal and relegating others to outer darkness - essentially, the BaL approach. Now I think that approach is completely wrong. The idea of the perfect performance, particularly of outstanding and complex musical works, seems preposterous. There is always more to discover in these works and to believe that there is only one way, one true path, can shut off the discoveries that can be made by exploring completely different interpretations. I rarely listen to once-favourite recordings now, not least because I feel I know them inside out, every phrase and every inflection. I can't recapture the sense of discovery I had with them. And especially with very well known and frequently broadcast works, I rarely listen to any recordings I have - I'd rather wait for some special event, a live concert or R3 Proms/EIF broadcasts.
I think we shouldn't forget - particularly those concerned with HIPP - that every studio recording takes us away from the kind of experience that composers would have expected of their audiences, at least up to the early C20 and that one of the advantages of recordings, their repeatability, is also a drawback.
I don't want to knock recordings - how could I? Most of the music I know and love I first heard through recordings. They allow us to hear far more music, including unfamiliar music, than we could simply through going to concerts or listening to broadcasts (even on internet radio). They provide an archive of performances by great musicians of the past, with access to a huge range of different performance styles. But there are downsides. One is that some works simply become too well known - something that could not have been the case in the time of Beethoven - and another is that if a recording is infinitely repeatable it progressively removes any element of unpredictability about the performance, which at least the live performance has.
When I first got interested in classical music, aeons ago, the excitement of the discovery of the music was everything. I couldn't care who the performers were, indeed I often couldn't remember that. Later on, I became interested in who was performing, started comparing recordings, started putting some on a pedestal and relegating others to outer darkness - essentially, the BaL approach. Now I think that approach is completely wrong. The idea of the perfect performance, particularly of outstanding and complex musical works, seems preposterous. There is always more to discover in these works and to believe that there is only one way, one true path, can shut off the discoveries that can be made by exploring completely different interpretations. I rarely listen to once-favourite recordings now, not least because I feel I know them inside out, every phrase and every inflection. I can't recapture the sense of discovery I had with them. And especially with very well known and frequently broadcast works, I rarely listen to any recordings I have - I'd rather wait for some special event, a live concert or R3 Proms/EIF broadcasts.
I think we shouldn't forget - particularly those concerned with HIPP - that every studio recording takes us away from the kind of experience that composers would have expected of their audiences, at least up to the early C20 and that one of the advantages of recordings, their repeatability, is also a drawback.
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