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Re: [F_MINOR] Brahms #1 & summer



At 02:09 PM 6/22/2004 -0400, Elmer_Elevator wrote (about GG's performance
of Brahms concerto 1):
Tradition is just the collection of unexamined prejudices you're stuck
with at any given moment. Of all the virtues, it's the most transient, and
most of the time that's a good thing. I wouldn't even want to shackle the
future to only Glenn's interpretive ideas, much as they thrill and delight me.

Well said. I like that concerto performance (GG Brahms 1, with Bernstein), but there are another half dozen or so that I like just as well or better, including GG's with Baltimore/Adler. That was within half a year of the Bernstein one, and GG's interpretation in it sounds (to me) fresher. Has that one with Adler ever been reissued on anything other than Music & Arts, since Sony acquired the rights to all that stuff?


Hope everybody's having a great summer.

Oh yeah, definitely. A couple of months ago I discovered Bach's own keyboard tuning (a previously unknown one, anywhere) and I've been playing through all of his keyboard and organ music to hear it afresh: a delight. For one thing, this blows away all the prejudices of tradition with regard to equal temperament, and the way Bach's music has sounded in it: because he did something deeply different. It's weird for me now to go back and listen to recordings tuned differently (they ALL are), and realize what's missing in them: a whole level of musical subtlety and expression that simply isn't there when the instrument is tuned incorrectly, no matter how hard the performer works to make up for it.

Brad Lehman

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