RECORDING GLUT

posted by James Reel

    Terry Teachout has posted an intelligently jaded essay about avoiding new recordings of standard repertory. It’s difficult to excerpt, so I’ll just repeat his summary here and hope it inspires you to go read the whole thing from the beginning:

I do solemnly swear that I will never again review a new recording of the complete Brandenburg Concertos. If you [publicists] want to get my attention, you'll have to think of another way, preferably not involving plastic explosives. Furthermore, I have every intention of regularly adding other warhorses to my do-not-resuscitate list, so if you want to know what I think of your upcoming recording of Eine kleine Nachtmusik, you'd better get on the stick. I'm sure this decision will cause me to miss out on something good—probably even several hundred somethings—but I don't expect to lose any sleep over it. If God had meant me to spend the middle of my journey writing comparison reviews of two dozen different versions of the Eroica, He would have given me more patience, a bigger apartment, and a longer life.

    I agree with most of the points Terry makes in the course of his essay. My agreement would have been more wholehearted a couple of years ago, but I think we’ve entered a period in which many of the performers who are getting recorded actually do have something new, personal and interesting to say about the music. This is true especially in the case of chamber ensembles and early-music groups from the Mediterranean. Just about any Baroque recording on some small label from France, Italy or Spain is worth taking a chance on now, if you have any sympathy for that music. Even performances by full orchestras are becoming more interesting. From the 1960s through most of the 1990s, orchestral performance became faceless, partly out of “fidelity to the score” (not imposing an individual point of view on somebody else’s music), and partly because there wasn’t enough rehearsal time to work on interpretive details. But even that is changing with the arrival of younger conductors who know how to rehearse efficiently and aren’t ashamed to be themselves on the podium.
    Still, like Terry Teachout, I have way too many fine CDs of performances I already like very much, and a new recording has to be very special to inspire me to make room for it on my shelves.