Focus on recordings interferes with music appreciation?

[Ken B]

If it weren't for recordings, I would not have had music to appreciate.

Exactly. My recorded to live listening ratio is well over a thousand to one.

[Brian]

Part of my music appreciation is exploring various performances/recordings. And this is really only for works that I truly love. For me, it's like seeing different actors portraying Hamlet, it's the same words but told in a different voice and tone. You still get Hamlet, but you're getting a different approach to the core of the character.
I also don't ever feel other listeners are depriving themselves of appreciation if they decide to only listen to one performance/recording. It's a personal preference of mine and I enjoy I quite a bit,

Love this post.

[kishnevi]

Perhaps, and there is always room for alternate readings & recordings .. but so far, in the instances I'm thinking-of rarely. What guys like Stockhausen, Boulez and even Ligeti for instance (true masters of their own musical universes) .. left behind in terms of a recorded legacy is pretty hard to match in terms of insight, picking the best players for the job and how to record the stuff best to bring out all of the little details..

if that were truly so--and I don't think it is, at least as far as Ligeti and Boulez are concerned--the music involved would not be worth hearing even once.  If a piece of music is worth hearing, then it will bear multiple interpretations, and not just one that the composer focused on at the time of initial performance.

Some years back,  Vladimir Ashkenazy  recorded the Bach Partitas for keyboard;  he performed them in a manner that in no way could be thought of as being intended by Bach--it sounds almost like Chopin--yet it is a superb performance, precisely because it is do different.      Gould evolved his interpretation so much from his original conception (as found in the 1955) over a 25 year period that he thought it worthwhile to record them a second time.

Boulez can stand that kind of interpretive difference,  So can Ligeti.   Stockhausen--well, you know my opinion of Stockhausen   

[kishnevi]

If it weren't for recordings, I would not have had music to appreciate.

Same here.  There hasn't been an effective classical music presence on radio in my area for years*, and I rarely have the chance to go to concerts or operas, which are not plentiful to being with here and often inconveniently placed (the New World Symphony, for instance, insists on playing only in South Beach and only in the weekends, which means no parking after a forty minute drive in traffic).  If I do go to those Cleveland Orchestra concerts this coming winter, it will be the first symphony concerts I've been to since I was college.

In fact,  the whole reason I started buying CDs was because the local station went off the airwaves.

*there is a station,  part of the Minnesota Public Radio network,  but it broadcasts on a low frequency with low power, and I can only hear it on my car radio, never on my home radios.

[Madiel]

I'm reminded of Ravel's rather infamous retort that "performers are slaves".

Clearly, those people who want to experience different approaches to a piece of music don't agree with him.

It's also worth nothing that Ravel himself didn't always express this view. Roger Nichols' biography relates a number of instances of performers being a bit terrified by Ravel, and stories of how he would stop them almost every bar to correct something. But it also includes an anecdote of one rehearsal where the performers, having expected the worst, got through the whole piece. And all Ravel said at the end was that it wasn't how he would have done it, but it worked.

[Karl Henning]

I'm reminded of Ravel's rather infamous retort that "performers are slaves".

Clearly, those people who want to experience different approaches to a piece of music don't agree with him.

It's also worth nothing that Ravel himself didn't always express this view. Roger Nichols' biography relates a number of instances of performers being a bit terrified by Ravel, and stories of how he would stop them almost every bar to correct something. But it also includes an anecdote of one rehearsal where the performers, having expected the worst, got through the whole piece. And all Ravel said at the end was that it wasn't how he would have done it, but it worked.

My inclination would be to harmonize these stories thus:  there is a boundary, and on this side are interpretive nuances which fall within the composer's broad intentions;  on the other side, excess from which the composer naturally recoils.

As with so many things in this wonderful art of Music, that boundary is largely discussible.

[Karl Henning]

That said, sometimes a great performing artist will make what is, on the face of it, an inadmissably radical departure from the composer's engraved intent, and yet -- make it work.

I read somewhere (on the Internet, so, gentlemen, prepare your grains of salt) that Copland approved of the Emerson, Lake & Palmer adaptation of his Fanfare for the Common Man.

[mn dave]

I imagine most composers would be happy with anyone playing their compositions, even on wax paper and comb.

[Karl Henning]

In the present, yes;  back in Ravel's day, composers were held in (and no doubt earned) higher esteem.

[mn dave]

In the present, yes;  back in Ravel's day, composers were held in (and no doubt earned) higher esteem.

Before that evil jazz/rock 'n' roll music came along...

[Karl Henning]

Two words:

"Liverpool Oratorio"

[mn dave]

Two words:

"Liverpool Oratorio"

I've never had the pleasure. 

[Karl Henning]

No one who has listened to it has had pleasure, either 

[mn dave]

No one who has listened to it has had pleasure, either 

[EigenUser]

I'm reminded of Ravel's rather infamous retort that "performers are slaves".

Clearly, those people who want to experience different approaches to a piece of music don't agree with him.

It's also worth nothing that Ravel himself didn't always express this view. Roger Nichols' biography relates a number of instances of performers being a bit terrified by Ravel, and stories of how he would stop them almost every bar to correct something. But it also includes an anecdote of one rehearsal where the performers, having expected the worst, got through the whole piece. And all Ravel said at the end was that it wasn't how he would have done it, but it worked.

Last year I saw a documentary on Bartok's last few years in the US. There was an interview of a member of the BSO who played in the premiere of the Concerto for Orchestra who spoke of the one time he saw Bartok, who was sitting in the audience area during a rehearsal with Koussevitzky (who also commissioned the work). According to the BSO member, they started playing and suddenly Bartok interrupted them with "It's much too fast!" So, they started again. A few measures into the piece, "It's too loud!"

This continued on a few more times until Koussevitzky suggested "Mr. Bartok, why don't you write down all of your concerns as they come up and I will address them with the orchestra after the rehearsal break?" The composer immediately pulled out a paper and pencil and started furiously writing down as the orchestra continued playing. Bartok had to leave during the break and Koussevitzky started the second half of the rehearsal by announcing "I've spoken to Mr. Bartok, and he says that everything is fine."

[Karl Henning]

Interesting stories of Koussevitzky in here.

[DavidRoss]

Two words:

"Liverpool Oratorio"

Game, set, and match.

[Mirror Image]

Last year I saw a documentary on Bartok's last few years in the US. There was an interview of a member of the BSO who played in the premiere of the Concerto for Orchestra who spoke of the one time he saw Bartok, who was sitting in the audience area during a rehearsal with Koussevitzky (who also commissioned the work). According to the BSO member, they started playing and suddenly Bartok interrupted them with "It's much too fast!" So, they started again. A few measures into the piece, "It's too loud!"

This continued on a few more times until Koussevitzky suggested "Mr. Bartok, why don't you write down all of your concerns as they come up and I will address them with the orchestra after the rehearsal break?" The composer immediately pulled out a paper and pencil and started furiously writing down as the orchestra continued playing. Bartok had to leave during the break and Koussevitzky started the second half of the rehearsal by announcing "I've spoken to Mr. Bartok, and he says that everything is fine."

Lol...that was an amusing anecdote. I enjoyed reading it, especially since I'm a hardcore Bartokian.

[Ken B]

Lol...that was an amusing anecdote. I enjoyed reading it, especially since I'm a hardcore Bartokian again.

FTFY

[Mirror Image]

FTFY