Featured in the Programme:

http://cylinders.library.ucsb.edu

http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/berlhtml

http://charm.rhul.ac.uk

http://kcl.ac.uk/kis/schools/hums/music/ksa

http://damians78s.co.uk

http://quartier-des-archives.blogspot.com

http://public-domain-archive.com

http://www.karadar.com

http://pristineclassical.com

http://www.musicpreserved.org.uk

http://www.classicalmusicmobile.com

Additional links:

Free sites:

http://www.europarchive.org [n.b.: this site has been geographically blocked for the USA for some time; as of Wednesday 12 August, this seems to be the case for NZ as well, alas]

[Update: it's working again - yay!]

http://nealshistoricalcorner.blogspot.com

http://elbaulcoleccionista.blogspot.com

http://www.archive.org/details/78rpm

http://www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/gramophone/index-e.html

Composer sites:

http://www.kantate.info/old_recordings.htm (Bach; in Japanese)

http://www.abruckner.com/downloads

Performer sites:

http://www.huberman.info

http://voxnovamedia.com/lehmann/sings/index.html

http://www.cantabile-subito.de

http://stoki.hp.infoseek.co.jp

Commercial site:

http://www.historic-recordings.co.uk

Today in Pressing On, rather than reviewing any CDs, as such, I’ll be guiding you through the shadowy world of historical recordings on the internet.

It’s one of the delicious ironies of modern life, that new technology is utilised to preserve and promote the products of technologies that are now obsolete. One of the unforeseen growth-areas of the Compact Disc was the popularity that it gave to the re-release of earlier recordings - stretching right back to the Golden Age of Melba, Caruso and others.
And now, at a time when some consider the CD to be on the edge of obsolescence, these early recordings are being distributed on the Web as Mp3s, FLACs and other audio formats.

Obviously, there’s no way I can cover every historical download source on the Web, so I’ll concentrate on just a few of the ones that have caught my attention, for good or ill. Don’t forget to look at the “links” pages on these sites - they often have pointers towards other websites of interest.

I thought we’d start by going back to Edison Cylinders on the web.
The Cylinder Preservation and Digitization Project, at the University of Iowa, has a large number of goodies for the dedicated fan of historical material. Much of it veers towards the popular taste of the day, but there are a few cylinders of genuinely significant artists. Here’s Leo Slezak recorded in 1913 in “E lucevan le stele” from Puccini’s Tosca.

Puccini: “E lucevan le stelle” from Tosca - Leo Slezak (tenor) with orch
Edison Blue Amberol 28146 [Reissue of Edison 4-minute Amberol B155]
Released 1913 4′04″
http://cylinders.library.ucsb.edu/mp3s/1000/1530/cusb-cyl1530d.mp3

Leo Slezak with Puccini’s “E lucevan le stelle” downloaded from cylinders.library.ucsb.edu

The Cylinder could actually be a very good sound-quality medium - far better than many early flat discs, but it was harder to store, more fragile, and not as practical from a manufacturing point of view.

A small, but very good, site devoted to the very earliest 78s has been set up by the Library of Congress. It’s devoted to Emile Berliner, the inventor of the flat disc. As well as a sampling of recordings, there are scans of catalogues and other documents, that make for fascinating reading.
memory.loc.gov/ammem/berlhtml

Here’s another tenor, Ferruccio Giannini, with Jean Fauré’s The Palms - issued back in 1899. As you’ll be able to hear, the sound is inferior to the 1913 cylinder we just heard; it’s a case of contrasting the then well-established technology of the cylinder to the new-and-yet-to-be-improved invention of the flat disc.

Jean Fauré: The Palms - Ferruccio Giannini (tenor) with pno
Berliner 0297 rec. 1899 2′08″
http://memory.loc.gov/mbrs/berl/130297.mp3

Les Rameaux or The Palms by Jean Fauré, sung by Feruccio Giannini.

As with many early cylinders, most of the Berliner discs were of popular material. Fred Gaisberg, who was involved with Berliner almost from the very beginning, wrote that in those early days the closest you’d get to Mozart would be “Imitation of Railway Trains on the Side Drum” by a fellow called George Mozart!

Another must-visit site to do with 78s is the UK-based CHARM - the Arts and Humanities Research Council’s Centre for the History and Analysis of Recorded Music. It’s in a state of flux, and at the moment has a recursive element to it that Kafka would have been proud of. Just try to access their sound files…
But - it has a massive 357Mb pdf of one of the most important books for collectors of electrical 78s, WERM - or, the World’s Encyclopaedia of Recorded Music. That, along with its supplements, also downloadable, is indispensable. Go to charm.rhul.ac.uk and have a look around.
Rather worryingly, another resource there is an audio application that can compare all sorts of parameters such as tempo and dynamics from two different tracks of the same piece, billed as being useful for those who want to study recordings, not just listen to them. These guys need to get out more.

According to their website, many of the recordings from the archive of King’s College London will be transferred to the CHARM site in the near future, so it’s worth looking out for. For the moment, the King’s site itself has a number of interesting mp3s, mostly Schubert songs: kcl.ac.uk/kis/schools/hums/music/ksa. (You’ll find links to all these on our own website, by the way, radionz.co.nz.)
Here’s one of the King’s mp3s - Gerhard Hüsch singing Der Leiermann - the final song in Schubert’s Winterreise. The pianist is Hans Udo Müller; the recording dates from 1933.

Schubert: Der Leiermann from Winterreise - Gerhard Hüsch (baritone), Hans Udo Müller (pno)
HMV DA 1346 (rec. 1933) 3′08″
http://kcl.ac.uk/kis/schools/hums/music/ksa/OD1638-2.mp3

Schubert’s Der Leiermann - Gerhard Hüsch, with Hans Udo Müller accompanying, originally on an HMV 78.

Enthusiastic hobbyists are an important source of historical downloads, stretching from old cylinders through to transfers of early LPs. Many of them do a very good job, both in terms of their transfers, and discographical research - very much a labour of love; some are more useful than “official” sites.

One of the best for 78s is run by the eponymous Damian of damians78s.co.uk

He tends to specialise in orchestral recordings, quite often British ones, and has quite a few interesting acoustics. I should, perhaps, clarify my terms - acoustic recordings were made up until 1925 - no microphones involved, the musicians had to crowd around a large recording horn; microphones came in with electrical recording from about 1925 onwards, and resulted in much greater clarity and fidelity.

Here’s an interesting offering from our friend Damian: an acoustic recording from 1921 of Grieg’s Piano Concerto; Arthur de Greef is the pianist with the Royal Albert Hall orchestra under Landon Ronald.

Grieg: Piano Concerto in A minor (abridged) - Arthur de Greef (pno), Royal Albert Hall Orch/ Landon Ronald
HMV D 551-2 (rec. 1921)
[fade down at c. 2'16"] (7′42″ track total)http://www.mediafire.com/file/nwd4frimkzj/GriegConcerto-acoustic+solos-DeGreef.zip

Part of the first movement of Grieg’s Piano Concerto - Arthur de Greef with the Royal Albert Hall Orchestra conducted by Sir Landon Ronald. Interestingly, the same performers made an electrical recording of the work in 1927, and that’s also on damians78s.co.uk

There are a number of sites out there devoted to early LPs - one of the more interesting ones, I think, is a French site: quartier-des-archives.blogspot.com

Old LPs, and a few 78s, mostly devoted to French performers. There’s even Louis Martini conducting the first recording of Charpentier’s mass Assumpta est Maria back in 1953.

Here’s part of Franck’s Symphony in D minor from an early Chant du Monde LP - Roger Désormière conducting the Orchestre de la Société Philharmonique de Paris in 1951.

Franck: Symphony in D minor (3rd mvt) - Orchestre de la Société Philharmonique de Paris/ Roger Désormière
Le Chant du Monde LDX-8027 (rec.1951)
9′48″
http://quartier-des-archives.blogspot.com

The finale from Franck’s Symphony in D minor - Roger Désormière conducting.

Another largeish historical download site is Japanese in origin: public-domain-archive.com
There’s an English language link at the left of the homepage.

It has a good selection of works, many in multiple performances.
Here’s Karl Böhm conducting the Vienna Philharmonic in 1949 - Mozart’s Impressario Overture, which (on the original 78s) was a filler side to the Jupiter Symphony.

Mozart: Overture to Der Schauspieldirektor - VPO/ Karl Böhm
4′16″
http://public-domain-archive.com/classic/download.php?lang=eng&album_no=527

Karl Böhm with the Vienna Philharmonic in 1949 - the overture to The Impressario by Mozart. A timely reminder of just how good Böhm could be.

Another free site with lots on offer is the Italian-hosted karadar.com

To download anything, you have to provide an e-mail address, to which they mail the link; this then expires after a set time. It’s a bit of a palaver, but an improvement on their old system: that relied on a totally separate website for downloading, which didn’t have any performer details; for works with multiple recordings (and there are quite a few) you had to work out who the performers might be by track duration!

Here’s some Bach on the piano. One of the three part Sinfonias played by Frenchwoman Marcelle Meyer. I love the Romantic sweep and wistful quality she brings to what was essentially a teaching exercise…

Bach: Sinfonia no. 5 in Eb BWV 791 - Marcelle Meyer (pno)Discophile Français XXVII (rec. 1948)
2′37″
http://www.karadar.com

Marcelle Meyer with Bach’s Sinfonia (or Three-part Invention) no. 5. It’s nice to hear that the pitch is correct, unlike some of the tracks in EMI’s Introuvables CD release. The Sinfonias also appear on public-domain-archive.com, but they’re incorrectly pitched; which does leave one wondering if they haven’t just pirated the EMI CDs…

Incidentally, one lovely quirk to the Karadar site, is that in the drop-down menu from their search page there’s the option to show “Contaminated” music - which brings up Porgy & Bess and works by Piazzolla!

All of the websites I’ve mentioned up to now offer free downloads.
When it comes to commercial websites, where you have to pay for what you get, one of the most prominent is pristineclassical.com

They have a number of in-house transfers from 78 and LP, and have begun to reissue out of print releases from the label Music and Arts, applying their own remastering on top.

When it comes to the remastering of historical recordings, Pristine takes a different approach from many others. If your everyday transfer could be described as a “polite restoration”, then this is a full-blown “extreme renovation”, complete with bulldozing down the walls to make way for a giant Jacuzzi. I exaggerate, perhaps, but it’s certainly not a non-interventionist technique. The aim has been to re-engineer the sound of old recordings so they’re comparable to modern ones. But for me, part of the appeal of historical recordings is that they don’t sound like modern ones. Pristine’s biggest audio “sin”, in my opinion, is in the use of a harmonic balancing technique whereby the sound of a modern recording is used to rebalance the old one in its sonic image. The results are variable, with some of the worst being the Music and Arts reissues. If you like to hear your Furtwängler sounding like he’s Gavin Sutherland conducting the Royal Ballet Sinfonia, go for it; but, without wishing to offend the very pleasant Mr Sutherland, I’d much rather have my Furtwängler sounding like - well, Furtwängler.
Sometimes Pristine’s transfers are extraordinary, but others just sound artificial. There are plenty of sound-clips on the site, so you’ll be able to work it out for yourself. Pristine has just signed up Mark Obert-Thorn, one of the world’s finest transfer engineers, so it’ll be interesting to see what proceeds from that.

As well as material that’s been well-covered by the major CD labels, EMI, Naxos, and others, there are also some unusual and rarer items: Barbirolli as cellist, playing the first of Bach’s Viola da Gamba sonatas, the world premiere performance of Barber’s Adagio, Bruno Walter’s earliest acoustic recordings.

The ordering process is pretty painless. The site’s based in France, so you pay in Euros - and they’ll take either credit card or Paypal. And unlike other sites, Pristine will also post CD copies for a slightly higher price. If you’re feeling like a major purchase, they even offer their complete collection on a large-capacity external hard-drive.

Here’s that world premiere performance of Samuel Barber’s Adagio for Strings - Toscanini conducting the NBC Symphony Orchestra in 1938, sourced from the original radio broadcast:

Barber: Adagio for Strings - NBC SO/ Arturo Toscanini
Rec. 1938 (live)
7′37″
From http://pristineclassical.com

Samuel Barber’s Adagio for Strings at its world premiere performance under Arturo Toscanini in 1938. That’s the 16-bit Flac version; Pristine also offers it in an “Ambient Stereo” version, a higher bitrate Flac suitable for burning to DVD, and Mp3.
The website, once again: pristineclassical.com

On the 29th of May this year, a new venture - MpLive - was launched, in association with the UK organisation Music Preserved. It’s offering mostly live concerts, with a focus especially on opera; many of the recordings are sourced from Lord Harewood’s collection, and most come from off-air broadcast recordings. Restorations are by Roger Beardsley, who’s well known to collectors of historical material. Some of their offerings include the world premiere of Britten’s Gloriana, Mackerras conducting Blow’s Venus and Adonis, and Kubelick conducting Janacek’s Jenufa.

As is the case with Pristine, there’s a selection of different audio formats for download, and the pricing is based on which you choose. The link is musicpreserved.org.uk

I took the plunge with a 1958 recording of Handel’s Samson, featuring Jon Vickers, Joan Sutherland and others, with Raymond Leppard conducting. An abridged, staged version of the work.

Here’s the great Canadian tenor Jon Vickers singing “Total eclipse”. No-one would try to sing it like this nowadays - and let’s be frank, no-one could!

Handel: “Total eclipse” from Samson - Jon Vickers (ten), Orch of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden/ Raymond Leppard
Broadcast recording from the Harewood Collection (rec. 1958)
4′32″
(from http://www.musicpreserved.org.uk)

“Total eclipse” from Handel’s Samson in a 1958 Covent Garden production; Jon Vickers the tenor, with Raymond Leppard conducting the Orchestra of the Royal Opera House.

I have to say that when it comes to paying for digital downloads, there are two things that I’m uneasy with.

First, I actually feel rather aggrieved at having to pay for them. There’s so much good material available free, as we’ve seen today; and it’s almost as if you’re paying for nothing at all when there’s no physical object involved. At least with a 78, LP, cassette tape or CD, it’s a tangible thing; and you’re unlikely to accidentally destroy it, or lose everything in a hard-drive crash.

Secondly, there’s the issue of sound quality. With Mp3, in order to reduce the file-size, information is left out. Depending on just how much is left out (the so-called “bitrate”) the sound can range from not too dissimilar to CD quality, down to something that’s almost unlistenable. It’s in the treble where this becomes most apparent, with a hard, jangly sound. Also, with downloaded music, the most common way of listening to it is through an ipod or computer speakers - and that’s hardly high fidelity! Burning downloaded tracks onto CD, or playing them through a sound-system via a high-quality soundcard are much better options. Even some of the free sites I’ve looked at today have higher-fidelity FLAC files on offer - much better, as that’s essentially CD-quality sound.

On the other hand, in defence of downloads, there’s the convenience factor (at least for those who have a broadband connection and some degree of computer literacy). After all, few people have access to great piles of 78s and a gramophone; or even a turntable capable of running to 78rpm if you want to use your current sound-system. And storing music on a computer hard-drive certainly helps avoid clutter round the house!

When it comes to commercial download sites, the cheapest would have to be the French-based classicalmusicmobile.com - one Euro per complete work downloaded - no matter the length of that work. (Wagner fans take note!)
They have a preview option, which is just as well - I came across some files that sound truly awful. They offer only Mp3, as opposed to the higher quality options available through Pristine and MpLive.

Once again, I didn’t encounter any problems with the online buying process. Interestingly, the budget price meant my reluctance to purchase wasn’t nearly as strong. Perhaps, when it comes down to it, price is the key thing with downloads!

Two works in their catalogue caught my eye in particular - Rameau’s Platée conducted by Hans Rosbaud (a recording I’ve been after for some time), and a live account of Monteverdi’s 1610 Vespers from 1957, with Eugen Jochum conducting. I kid you not. Its aesthetics certainly aren’t those of today, but, once again, that’s part of the appeal. I think that just as the Period Instrument movement challenged the status quo years ago with regard to the prevailing Romantically-influenced style of interpretation, it’s no bad thing for our “early music assumptions” to be in turn challenged by recordings from 50 years ago. We have things that they didn’t have; but equally, they had things which we seem to have lost.

Here’s the very opening - “Deus in adiutorium”.

Suspend your sense of critical disbelief, and listen to the Heavens opening!

Monteverdi: “Deus in adiutorium” from 1610 Vespers - Bavarian Radio Chorus & SO/ Eugen Jochum (rec. 1957)
2′21″
(from http://www.classicalmusicmobile.com )

The Hound of Descartes

A dog barks.
What does this tell you?
For a start: since you’re hearing something, you exist.
Further, obviously, the dog exists.
You can tell the approximate size of the dog, its location, its distance from you (most important, this!), and even its emotional state.
In fact, there are no fewer than 101 ways you could hear and interpret the dog’s bark. And there’s another implication, too (let’s call it number 102): you’re learning about music the Robin Maconie way.

Classical music has a problem: people have become estranged from this part of their cultural heritage.
Internationally, audiences are declining in size and increasing in age, and businesses connected with the artform face financial difficulty. Ironically, at a time when the availability of this music has never been greater, its general relevance has never seemed slighter.
But surely the complexity and spiritual depth of Bach, the symphonies of Beethoven or Brahms, or the quartets of Haydn or Shostakovich are every bit as important in the Western “culture of ideas” as (say) the work of Michelangelo, Rembrandt, Newton or Goethe? So why do so many just not “get” Western art music? (Especially considering the number that can relate to contemporary and historical art and literature.)
What’s desperately needed, it seems, is something that can provide a connection for those who stand outside the discipline.

Enter Robin Maconie: biographer of onetime enfant terrible Karlheinz Stockhausen, and a teacher working outside the usual academic hotspots. His most recent tenure, before returning to New Zealand, was at the Savannah College of Art and Design in the US – hardly Juilliard or the Curtis Institute. His latest book, The Way of Music, is a one-volume resource for teaching others – or oneself – how to listen, and how to think about music.

Rather than beginning and ending exclusively within the world of classical music, the author starts by getting people simply to listen and react to sound. (Hence the canine with the Cartesian twist.) Maconie’s contention – tested through his work with design students in subjects ranging from computer animation to furniture building – is that if you can hear, and can mentally link across disciplines, you already have the tools necessary to engage with the music at some level.
So, starting with the dog barking we explore soundwaves and their interaction with the physical environment’s differing surfaces. Later, music is described in terms of information management (musical notation) and personnel management (musicians performing together). Music and its instruments’ connections with mathematics, astronomy, geometry and architecture are investigated; also time perception and the nature of memory and cognition. Maconie’s genius is to take classical music from its comfortable isolation and place it back into context within the wider physical and artistic world. Back, too, into the intellectual company it used to enjoy before that wider world began to neglect it.

Much of the book would work well as a content-rich website, particularly when discussing specific recordings of musical pieces; the author himself describes it as a “paper website”, and there’s a strong similarity to the Web’s hyperlinks in the way he presents statements that are later fleshed out. Alternatively, an accompanying CD might be helpful in enhancing the book as a resource for either individual or classroom/ lecture theatre use.
Maconie’s explanations of the meanings of certain pieces may raise some eyebrows: the last movement of Haydn’s Surprise Symphony, for example, described as a warning that “the crisis about to hit the upper class is not just a social revolution but divine retribution”. Unfortunately, overemphasis on context can drown out the inherent musical meaning. But it would be wrong to carp. Used judiciously the technique of “reading” artworks in terms of their political and sociological contexts can provide valuable insights, and again the author offers an inroad for those more familiar with the lexicon of contemporary visual art than that of music. The book’s virtues more than outweigh any flaws.

Maconie’s Way may not be a magic formula to solve all classical music’s woes, but for many people – and not just novices - it will help reveal this music’s rich intellectual depths. That’s a significant achievement. It deserves widespread circulation and implementation.

(THE WAY OF MUSIC: AURAL TRAINING FOR THE INTERNET GENERATION, by Robin Maconie. Scarecrow Press, $US49.95)

I’ve recently been re-listening to Leon Fleisher’s CD Two Hands on the Vanguard label, and the difference between his playing and that of so many other pianists active today is telling.
Instead of an overt technical virtuosity, here’s music making of true depth. Even without reference to the details of his life, it’s obvious that here is someone who’s dug deep into the music at hand: who’s probed its inner meaning and been able to translate something of the peaks and troughs of human existence into the sounds he creates at the keyboard. And in terms of “virtuosity”, it’s actually much more interesting and skillful than the work of so may others - layers and shades of dynamics, changes in tempo and sonority. It all takes enormous skill, intelligence and musicianship.

And what musicianship! This is music-making that achieves one of the primary goals of great art, no matter the genre: to uplift and nourish the human spirit.

Youth may have its benefits in terms of freshness, and an uncluttered approach. But mature artists such as Fleisher have more to offer - a rich, three-dimensional experience of art that draws us deep into the profundities of the human condition.

It has become common for performances and recordings to trumpet the use of some new edition or piece of musicological evidence (not to mention the rehibilitation of old instruments and playing techniques).

But surely a great performance stands or falls on its own internal musical (rather than musicological) integrity?

We need to get back to first principals: music is an artform that is first and foremost appreciated by the ear, rather than by concepts of historical propriety.

Only inadequate music making needs a musicological or academic imprimatur. Real, vital, living music-making is its own justification.

But is this wholly desirable?

A lengthy quote from the December 2006 edition of The New Criterion - concerned with the visual arts, yet (I believe) relevant here - suggests not:

Michael Lewis touches on a kindred issue in his finely considered essay about the Marxist critic T. J. Clark. Having come of age in the late 1960s, Clark made his reputation in the 1970s by shifting attention away from the work of art per se and focusing instead on the ambient social history in which the work appeared. Nimbly pursued, this effort to revitalize art by an injection of political concerns approach can yield exciting insights—though whether the insights have much to do with art is another question. In the end, the critical liabilities are probably more patent than the interpretative advantages. This is especially true when the method is applied to great works of art. “The tendency of Clark’s career,” Lewis writes, “has been to dislodge the aesthetic object from its pedestal to set it back into the social, cultural, and political currents that brought it forth. Such an approach, wielded judiciously, can immeasurably enrich the understanding of an object. But, used indiscriminately, it can also impoverish that understanding, rendering the object into a mere historical document—like a bill of lading or a deed of transfer. And a mediocre work of art always speaks far more eloquently about the society that made it than a great one.” When the subject is art, “social history” is more fruitful the more pedestrian the work it considers. No wonder so many politically-fired academic critics are so eager to blur the distinction between high art and popular culture, between superlative artistic achievement and the great pudding of mediocrity. For a political interpretation of art, greatness is a distraction at best, at worst it is a rival for the reader’s or viewer’s attention.

It all began with the Enlightenment, I suppose - the desire to define and categorise; to reduce everything to its component parts. But the problem with great art (and I include great musical performance in this) is that it can’t be reduced or formularized without destroying the mystery inherent in the artwork. The Characteristics given in the previous post should not be taken as a list of attributes to be checked off - a mechanical process that bypasses a genuine artistic experience.
For the most part, anyway, greatness is something that can’t be explained. It’s either there, or it’s not. And when it is, we know.

Sonority

A great conductor has the ability to change the sound of any given orchestra, and raise its standard. Arthur Nikisch was a noted example of this. Wilhelm Furtwängler, his successor at the Berlin Philharmonic, once wrote:

How long it took me, a young conductor, starting out like other young conductors, to discover why every orchestra sounded so changed under the simple beats of Arthur Nikisch; why the winds played without the usual exaggerated sforzati, the strings with a singing legato, and the sound of the brass fused with the other instruments, while the general tone of the orchestra acquired a warmth which it did not have under other conductors. I learned to understand that this beauty of unified sound under Nikisch was not an accident; that this phenomenon, to put it more accurately, was caused by the way in which Nikisch “beat into” the sound. That it was, therefore, not a result of his personality, his suggestion - this term does not exist for sober professionals - but of his “technique.”

The great conductor is able to draw out a different sonority according to the composer he is conducting at the time. Brahms does not sound like Beethoven does not sound like Bruckner, etc.

Authority

Connected very much with the above, a great conductor has the ability to command orchestral forces rather than follow them. There is a sense of personality and direction in his interpretations, rather than bland anonymity. We may not agree sometimes with his interpretative decisions, but will concede that he makes them convincing.

Revelation

A great conductor has the ability to reveal aspects of the music with which we were not previously aware. This is not a matter of caprice, of emphasizing the wrong things in a composition, or badly balancing an orchestra – simply the result of honest enquiry into the score.

Spirituality

A great conductor has the ability to produce performances that “link us in with the divine”, that “confront us with Art”, that “move the soul”. Great conductors are able to go beyond the written markings of the score to the spirit or sense of meaning that lies behind them.

Popularity

A great conductor has the ability to enthuse audiences and grow them. His art communicates, and not just to the educated elite: the “person in the street” will quite often react more positively than the snobbish intelligentsia, simply because he (or she) is reacting with genuine instinct rather than learned responses that may or may not have a basis in genuine musical experience.

“Great playing plays the right notes, but it also plays what connects those notes, what gives those notes meaning.” (Ralph Kirkpatrick)

Far too often, alas, it’s just the notes we hear, and not the connection - performances devoid of the essential spark that prompted the composition to be written. And herein lies the great problem facing classical music, the root cause of most of the problems that afflict it: modern performances of the great works of the past (particularly of the 19th century) have lost touch with the romantic spirit that was so closely tied in with the music’s creation. To re-create this music effectively, the underlying meaning has to be there, not just an accurate presentation of the notes in the score.