This is a long review of a book on how recording has influenced playing styles and what may have been lost in interpretation along the way, compared with the days before recording was invented. It is very detailed and thorough, and perhaps only pianists will have the patience to read thru it all. But the elegant, expert writing of the reviewer, the music writer and pianist Charles Rosen, makes it worth at least sampling. I found particularly intersting the last footnote: "We know that Beethoven played Mozart's D minor Concerto, K. 466, and that he disliked Mozart's playing, finding it 'too choppy' and preferring a longer line. Perhaps his interpretation of this most dramatic and original of Mozart's concertos was more satisfying than the composer's, but much of the lightness must have been lost."
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/18400#fnr7
[This message has been edited by Chaszz (edited 10-27-2005).]
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/18400#fnr7
[This message has been edited by Chaszz (edited 10-27-2005).]
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