There's no question, empirically, that going to concerts is good for your playing and listening to CDs is bad for your playing. Everyone has to make that choice--whether they are a listener or a player. Another way to look at it is that no one in the renaissance or baroque ever listened to CDs, it was never part of their training. CDs are a product of modern aesthetic values. To train yourself in renaissance and baroque style, I think it is important to study what they studied, up to a point. I draw the line at candles. A CD will never reveal how you play--at best it realizes the imagination of the artist, at worst it is frozen food--but even at its best it cannot approach the enchanted realm of live music
As for an interpretation that is not to one's taste, some interpretations are polarizing; that means that the artist has taken a significant stand. That's a sign of artistic independence. BRAVO! To the performer who can both charm and annoy. The point about married to one performance is interesting--although one can only be married to a recording, since the performance itself is just a passing fancy. Perhaps the listener of yore would have been horrified and bored by hearing the exact same piece the same way over and over again, like having a TIVO that could only record the same episode of Grey's Anatomy, or the Lost Pilot for Groundhog Day, where the hero is stuck making ice sculptures and taking beginning piano, but never escapes. dt At 03:19 PM 2/9/2010, you wrote: >30 years of listening! Hah! I certainly would like to. But >implicitely my point was that too many lute recordings are on the >brink of being too bland for my humble taste. Now even Robert Barto >falls prey to this. This I did not expect. >g > > >On 10.02.2010, at 00:12, howard posner wrote: > > > On Feb 9, 2010, at 2:47 PM, Gernot Hilger wrote: > > > >> My reference interpretation, a beloved compagnion for more than > >> thirty years is Hoppy's 1978 rendition on the 1755 Widhalm lute, > >> Reflexe edition, not the later recording on his van Lennep lute. I > >> find this particular piece overflowing with emotion, ardently > >> played, very moving. It just hits and touches me. The music is so > >> deep and calm and nevertheless arousing. What a masterpiece. And an > >> example of what can be done on the lute. > >> > >> Upon further reflection, I find that Robert does in fact express > >> himself, but only on a smaller scale. More civilised, perhaps. > >> Which I find a pity. > >> > >> Why is it that the emotional range of many lute recordings is so > >> small? Or compressed? It can be done otherwise. Or is it just a > >> matter of my ears being clogged? > > > > They may very well be clogged. If you've been married to one > > performance for 30 years, it's only natural to think of it as THE > > performance, and think of every other performance as if it were an > > attempt to duplicate it; therefore any other performance can hardly > > differ from it without being inferior. We all tend to judge music- > > making by some model we've internalized, and recordings are very > > powerful internalizers. > > > > You may be right about emotional scale, but I think you should be > > scientific about this: put away the Smith Reflexe recording, spend 30 > > years listening to Barto's, and then get back to us. > > -- > > > > To get on or off this list see list information at > > http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
