Re: [F_MINOR] Brahms #1 & summer

[Brad Lehman <bpl@UMICH.EDU>]

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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