# Ever new recordings by different musicians of the same old pieces makes no sense.



## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Chordalrock said:


> I do give credit to Gould for realising already fifty years ago that ever new recordings by different pianists of the same old pieces made no sense.


I know what you mean.


----------



## PlaySalieri (Jun 3, 2012)

It makes sense to the record companies.

For the life of me I cant understand why people buy the recordings of recent violinists and pianists. There is a such a wealth of amazing talent from the 80s backwards for virtually the entire repertoire (LP era and early CD) - all (I believe) unsurpassed in the last 20 odd years. Maybe some exceptions.


----------



## GreenMamba (Oct 14, 2012)

stomanek said:


> *For the life of me I cant understand why people buy the recordings of recent violinists and pianists. *There is a such a wealth of amazing talent from the 80s backwards for virtually the entire repertoire (LP era and early CD) - all (I believe) unsurpassed in the last 20 odd years. Maybe some exceptions.


There's a lot of talent since the '80s as well. of course, people (almost) always prefer what they grew up with.

Thank god poeple buy recordings by newer artists. CM needs all the help it can get.


----------



## Guest (Dec 30, 2015)

I like young new artists. I like the cleanest and newest recording sound. Old performances are wonderful, but nevertheless they are old.


----------



## Chordalrock (Jan 21, 2014)

With over a hundred different recordings available of things like Rachmaninov's 3rd piano concerto, I think it's safe to say that there has been overkill, and overkill of overkill.

I'm not saying different recordings of pieces you love are a bad thing, but I do wish people focused more on new music. Naxos and some small labels have been doing fine work in that respect, but still, when even works like Stravinsky's late masterpiece "Threni" don't have a good modern recording easily available, you know there's something not quite right about how things are.

Some pieces do seem to be cursed, like there can be many recordings of them but none truly satisfying. For example, does anyone folllow Beethoven's markings and indications in the last movement of "Appassionata"? And I only know one single recording of the "32 Variations in C Minor" (the one by Olli Mustonen) where the pianist plays the following anything like how Beethoven painstakingly demands:










I don't mind musicians deviating from the score, but it just seems odd when there's no one around who doesn't.


----------



## Bulldog (Nov 21, 2013)

Chordalrock said:


> With over a hundred different recordings available of things like Rachmaninov's 3rd piano concerto, I think it's safe to say that there has been overkill, and overkill of overkill.
> 
> I'm not saying different recordings of pieces you love are a bad thing, but I do wish people focused more on new music.


I don't think there's any problem. There are many recordings of both new and often-recorded music.


----------



## Johann Sebastian Bach (Dec 18, 2015)

There's too much choice in any number of useless things. I cast my eyes around the room I'm in and I see too many baubles and lights on the Christmas tree; too many chocolates; and too many Christmas presents. I've also eaten too much food.
We've had atrocious weather in the UK this month, caused partly by global warming which is caused by too much consumption and greed. Europe is facing a refugee crisis caused by too much hate.

I've spent my life earning my living from classical music and I'm eternally grateful to those who've come to my concerts or bought my CDs. Buy lots of CDs made by current artists and know that you're keeping classical music alive!


----------



## Nereffid (Feb 6, 2013)

Isn't classical music fun?

On the one hand we're berated for listening to old music at the expense of new music, and on the other we're encouraged to ignore new performances in favour of old ones!


----------



## isorhythm (Jan 2, 2015)

stomanek said:


> It makes sense to the record companies.
> 
> For the life of me I cant understand why people buy the recordings of recent violinists and pianists. There is a such a wealth of amazing talent from the 80s backwards for virtually the entire repertoire (LP era and early CD) - all (I believe) unsurpassed in the last 20 odd years. Maybe some exceptions.


It's not a question of surpassing. Every interpretation is different. The good ones offer unique insights.


----------



## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

isorhythm said:


> It's not a question of surpassing. Every interpretation is different. The good ones offer unique insights.


I think that's a really interesting idea which if I had time I'd like to explore. Insights into what?

Someone (I can't remember who) used to talk about _orgasmic_ performances - where the coming together of composition and performer makes something special happen, something which is unique to that context.


----------



## superhorn (Mar 23, 2010)

This is true up to a point, but it's still important for us to have recorded documentation of how every generation of classical musicians since the invention of recorded sound has interpreted the the core repertoire . 
Decades from now, people should be able to hear how the musicians of the present day performed the works of the great classical music, and so on . It would be terrible if we had no recordings by such legendary performers as Toscanini, Casals, Stokowski, Horowitz, Rubinstein, Heifetz, Furtwangler, 
Menuhin , Callas, Flagstad, Caruso, Beecham, Melchior, Bjorling, and others . But fortunately we do have them, in spades !
We can't deny Gustavo Dudamel, Alan Gilbert, Anna Netrebko, Anne Sophie Mutter, Yo Yo Ma, Lang Lang,
Angela Gheorghiu, Roberto Alagna, and other important performers of the present day the chance to leave documentation of their performances .
And we still have so much interesting offbeat repertoire available - a greater variety of classical works than has ever been available before !


----------



## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

Every era has its strengths & weaknesses, some of it due to technology. Old recordings from the 1940s have a certain way of drawing you in, if you ignore the fidelity and listen to the way the music is played. Recordings from the late 1950s to the late 1970s are analog tape, and due to the dynamic range limitations, is usually more closely miked, and with more spot mikes. Columbia Masterworks recordings always sound good to me for these reasons, among others. Also, the golden era of recording is passed; used to, recordings were a big deal, like a movie, a huge collaboration. That's pretty much vanished, replaced by small, mobile digital recording situations.
It's a good time to buy CDs, though, as all the back catalogues are being re-released on CD, in some cases with killer graphics and superior CD sound mastering.


----------



## ribonucleic (Aug 20, 2014)

stomanek said:


> For the life of me I cant understand why people buy the recordings of recent violinists and pianists.


There are inducements.


----------



## hreichgott (Dec 31, 2012)

If it's a good piece, there are many different ways it can be performed. Lots of recordings of crap pieces would make no sense. But having lots of people record good pieces, each bringing out what they hear in those pieces, is great.

People still perform Hamlet after all these years and every actor's Hamlet is different.

(ps that's an odd quote from Gould, isn't it, when Gould so often made purposely strange and unique choices in his playing in order to bring about an effect he found interesting...)


----------



## Guest (Dec 31, 2015)

Chordalrock said:


> I do give credit to Gould for realising already fifty years ago that ever new recordings by different pianists of the same old pieces made no sense.





Mandryka said:


> I know what you mean.


Let's just test the logic of this shall we?

Most here agree that we are all entitled to select our favourite interpretation, and that there is usually more than one that might be worthy of selection (though one or two members are insistent that the term 'definitive' means just that.) Therefore, there is no sense in the idea that once the 'definitive' piano sonatas by Beethoven had been recorded, there is no point anyone else making a recording.

I can't imagine Paul Lewis being told, "Sorry Paul, there's more than enough cycles of Beethoven's sonatas - and the definitive was recorded by Wilhelm Schnabel ...or was it Artur Kempff?...in 1930 and a whole load of shysters have been along since to do their "interpretations" - or more likely to make money. You'll just have to do someone else."


----------



## PlaySalieri (Jun 3, 2012)

isorhythm said:


> It's not a question of surpassing. Every interpretation is different. The good ones offer unique insights.


then keep buying every new recording if you feel the existing catalogue is not enough. I doubt if any violinist in the last 20 years can offer anything new compared to Perlman, Heiftetz, Grumiaux et al for insights and overall performance quality.


----------



## Guest (Dec 31, 2015)

stomanek said:


> then keep buying every new recording if you feel the existing catalogue is not enough. I doubt if any violinist in the last 20 years can offer anything new compared to Perlman, Heiftetz, Grumiaux et al for insights and overall performance quality.


...and we all should surely doubt that any composer can offer anything new compared to Hildegard of Bingen et al...

Our up-and-coming composers and performers must despair that they have anything to offer anyone of any quality in the face of such attitudes.


----------



## Nereffid (Feb 6, 2013)

Whatever the views expressed here, the fact is that today's record labels obviously feel that there _is_ a sufficient market for new recordings of old music. Otherwise they wouldn't keep producing them.
And bravo to today's labels and artists for doing so.


----------



## Haydn man (Jan 25, 2014)

If I were an artist today I would very much want to have recorded my version of the great works. Surely seeing and comparing yourself with the performances of the past is a challenge anyone would want to rise to.
Having had a long break from classical music and coming back a couple of years ago, one of the joys has been to listen to the new performers and compare them to the Perlman's and Arrau's of the past. That would sure have been a struggle if there were no new recordings.
However, I do notice the depressing tendency just as in the 80's for every man who stands in front of an orchestra to record a Beethoven cycle(s)has not diminished. It seems that these cycles are often generated as the fashion for playing the music changes, so we have smaller orchestras,HIP and tempo differences. Please don't get me wrong I like these different ways of playing the music, but does everyone have to therefore commit their insights for posterity. 
Then again if your a big orchestra about to go on tour with your megastar conductor and or soloist, then having a recent release of a blockbuster set is only going to help with ticket sales, just like rock music


----------



## Johann Sebastian Bach (Dec 18, 2015)

stomanek said:


> then keep buying every new recording if you feel the existing catalogue is not enough. I doubt if any violinist in the last 20 years can offer anything new compared to Perlman, Heiftetz, Grumiaux et al for insights and overall performance quality.


If I may, I think you're talking about habituation when you suggest there's been nothing to surpass the artists you quote. Like a favourite armchair or a pullover, we become used to the nuances of a particular interpretation and find its repetition pleasing.

As I said upthread, keeping classical music alive by supporting its practitioners is vital to its survival. I would urge all classical music lovers to take a broad view - an altruistic view - in buying CDs/audio tracks. It's not a question of "the existing catalogue" being enough - atrophication of the music business would surely be the result if this view became widespread.


----------



## isorhythm (Jan 2, 2015)

Mandryka said:


> I think that's a really interesting idea which if I had time I'd like to explore. Insights into what?
> 
> Someone (I can't remember who) used to talk about _orgasmic_ performances - where the coming together of composition and performer makes something special happen, something which is unique to that context.


Insights was probably the wrong word. I don't mean an intellectual understanding or something that could be expressed in words, but more like what you're talking about with orgasmic performances.

I don't see how collecting new recordings is any different from hearing live performances of pieces you already know. A performance is a performance, right?


----------



## Blancrocher (Jul 6, 2013)

I don't mind old works getting recorded, but it does bother me that any recent or seldom-recorded work needs to get paired with yet another version of a Beethoven or Sibelius concerto on the same album. I understand the economic rationale--but then reviewers often give performers/companies credit for creating an "interesting" program! Give me a break!


----------



## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Is this a sociological question? A matter of collective concern? People ask whether "we" need new versions of old music as if "we" were going to have live with the consequences of resource depletion or climate change. 

If someone wants to record a new version of Beethoven's 5th and someone wants to buy it, why should the rest of us give a flying fig?


----------



## Dim7 (Apr 24, 2009)

Blancrocher said:


> I don't mind old works getting recorded, but it does bother me that any recent or seldom-recorded work needs to get paired with yet another version of a Beethoven or Sibelius concerto on the same album. I understand the economic rationale--but then reviewers often give performers/companies credit for creating an "interesting" program! Give me a break!


Interesting post, but I think you probably should have talked about the connection between Wagner and Nazism somewhere to make people actually read it.


----------



## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

One piece that has been very often recorded is Triadic Memories, there must be half a dozen different performances. And I have to wonder what the economics can be - someone commented somewhere in this thread that it music be OK to release old music because the record companies wouldn't do it otherwise. Maybe the cost of a new recording is very little.

Here it is



Nereffid said:


> Whatever the views expressed here, the fact is that today's record labels obviously feel that there is a sufficient market for new recordings of old music. Otherwise they wouldn't keep producing them.


Can someone who's worked in the business talk us through how the ROI works?


----------



## Blancrocher (Jul 6, 2013)

Woodduck said:


> If someone wants to record a new version of Beethoven's 5th and someone wants to buy it, why should the rest of us give a flying fig?


My main grounds of complaint is that the person who buys it may well be me. It's especially inconvenient post-holidays, since my bank account isn't looking so good.


----------

