Read the ArticleDance of Shadows • Roman Mints, violin
Sound recording, which caused such a revolution in the performing arts, has also led inexorably to their crisis. Before recordings existed, there were only rare opportunities to hear any given piece, so comparing performances was no easy matter. A contemporary of Brahms’s would have been able to hear his symphonies only a few times during his life. Now anyone can listen to any of Brahms’s symphonies without leaving his house, in hundreds of different versions, with two clicks of a mouse. Before, a person would go to a concert expressly to hear a particular work; now he goes so he can tick off yet another interpretation of a work he has heard a hundred times.…
“…what really matters is his ability to work with each of the selections on the composer’s own terms. There is no questioning the technical skill he brings to each of the pieces he performs. More important, however, is his acute awareness of where the music actually resides beneath the surface level of all the marks on the score pages.”—Examiner.com