# Musicians listening to their recordings, or not



## Aurelian (Sep 9, 2011)

Many actors are self-conscious watching their own TV shows and movies, or even outright refuse to do so.

Have you heard what classical musicians say about listening to their own recordings?


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## chu42 (Aug 14, 2018)

Horowitz would reflect sourly on his recordings made in his youth:

On his Schumann F minor, he said that it was much too affected and said: "why didn't someone stop me?"


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## brahms4 (May 8, 2017)

I remember reading an interview in Stereo Review with Eugene Ormandy.The interviewer gasped at the huge collection of records that lined the walls in Ormandy`s music room.Ormandy said he was always given a copy of a LP by the company after the completion of every recording he made,but that he could never listen to them because it would always cause him to think of how he should have done it diffently.Bruno Walter apparently enjoyed listening to his own recordings with great pleasure according to Thomas Mann.


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## ArtMusic (Jan 5, 2013)

Aurelian said:


> Many actors are self-conscious watching their own TV shows and movies, or even outright refuse to do so.
> 
> Have you heard what classical musicians say about listening to their own recordings?


Yes, all the time. Many HIP performers do to study articulation, pitch and the like.


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## Axter (Jan 15, 2020)

Sir Georg Solti said once he rarely listens to his own recordings and always buys a new score, starts anew, when he prepares for a work he conducted before.


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## MarkW (Feb 16, 2015)

Well, I'm always weirded out listening to a tape of a concert I attended as an audience member. It's like: Do I know I'm there.? Can I hear me applaud? Did my presence affect the performance somehow? . . .


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

chu42 said:


> Horowitz would reflect sourly on his recordings made in his youth:
> On his Schumann F minor, he said that it was much too affected and said: "why didn't someone stop me?"


Why didn't he watch it in his youth and stop himself?


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