# The Gold Standard



## csacks (Dec 5, 2013)

My first approach to serious music listening (or regular music listening)was CBS´s Great Performances. I collected, in 2 or 3 years, as a student, all the 100 cassettes (it was in middle 80s, still not CD available). It included old records, Bruno Walter, Eugene Ormandy, George Szell, von Karajan, etc. I listened them so many times, that many of them became my favorites. Now, I have realized that my favorite versions are not those that are considered the best records or the best performances but those that are very close to my old Great Performances. Do you "suffer" from something like that or is it just me?.


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## Vesteralen (Jul 14, 2011)

I think that happens to a lot of us. I remember the old Murray Hill Records set of Brahms symphonies with Wolfgang Sawallisch and the Vienna Symphony I bought when I was just starting to listen back in 1970. Years later, I read some reviewer cut those recordings down unmercifully, but for decades after I first got to know them I still compared every other version of the Brahms symphonies with those interpretations and if a conductor strayed too far from Sawallisch's tempi and dynamics they just seemed plain wrong to me.

I've grown out of that a little, but 40+ years of listening will do that.


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## Perotin (May 29, 2012)

Yes, I call it the curse of first recording. Then I have to find a really exceptional interpretation, like the ones by Sviatoslav Richter, to override my initial impression, then I'm cured. :lol:


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## starry (Jun 2, 2009)

There doesn't have to be one best performance of a piece. If a performance communicates some of the essence of the music to you surely that is good, doesn't matter what a critic says. Obviously you can get used to a performance but eventually once you get too used to a piece you may like to try something different to see it in a new way.


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## Rangstrom (Sep 24, 2010)

Some of those recordings were amazing. Quite a bit of Walter and Szell is still in my rotation. I don't know if I have a first recording bias, but I certainly suffer from performance bias. In a choice between competing recordings I'll lean heavily toward performers that I saw in concert.


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## Guest (Dec 10, 2013)

csacks said:


> Now, I have realized that my favorite versions are not those that are considered the best records or the best performances....


But you consider them to be the best--or at least your favorites--and you are the one listening to them. So....

You have only your ears. You don't have my ears or any of the critics who have also done some considering. You have only your ears.

Respect your ears!!


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## csacks (Dec 5, 2013)

some guy said:


> But you consider them to be the best--or at least your favorites--and you are the one listening to them. So....
> 
> You have only your ears. You don't have my ears or any of the critics who have also done some considering. You have only your ears.
> 
> Respect your ears!!


You are right, at the end music is to be enjoyed and not to be analyzed, so what counts is what everybody considers OK. I do respect my ears and my emotional perception of music, but my point is that those interpretations that are different from the "Gold Standards" are considered odd versions. It happens with some concertos, where I expect to have the same cadence than my "original".


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