This is, I think, a fabulous piece of writing, by Denis Dutton about a book by Charles Rosen. By this I mean that I not only agree with just about every word of what Dutton says, but that I also think he strikes exactly the right tone when agreeing, or disagreeing, with Rosen.

Dutton makes the excellent point that an odd effect of the recording of classical music is that performing fashion has recently done a somersault. The first few technically satisfactory recordings of the standard repertoire tried to be as standard as possible, to be that "all round best version" ("safest" version!) that the BBC picks out on Saturday mornings. But now that there are dozens of such standard interpretations, the search is on for non-standard ones. We punters now dig out the eccentricities of early twentieth century virtuosi, and purchase new recordings by similarly wilful artists of our own time, who have suddenly leapfrogged over their more careful contemporaries. Well, that was me making these points. Here's how Dutton makes them:

Rosen is right that recording has altered how we regard musical works, but I’m not so sure he's exactly on the mark here. It does appear that the early recordings of complete sets were purchased mainly for repertoire. But one of the problems facing the classical recording industry today is that the market is saturated with repertoire. What will sell will be a performer – a big name pianist, for example, someone like Evgeny Kissin giving a fresh view of standard repertoire. A discount importer nearby to where I live has bins of CDs of standards – Sibelius symphonies, Brahms concertos, Chopin, and the like, all in adequate performances – for 54 cents each. At that price, the standard repertoire is no longer the issue: it is finding something new to do with it.

Rosen notes that "the eccentric and portentously personal interpretations by artists of the 1920s and 1930s" were not suitable for the later decades after the introduction of LPs, when a “faithful reflection of the composition” was more important than a unique, personal performance. He then disparages as a "myth" the notion that pianism was "more free in the grand old days of the past." But listening to the standard, so often tepid and correct, recordings of the 1950s, I’d say the atmosphere then was less free, and that a saturated market for repertoire today has actually forced pianists (or allowed them) to present themselves with something like the swagger of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. If, as Nietzsche says, a dying culture goes out in the blaze and sputter of fireworks, then the piano is dying in pretty spectacular fashion, with the likes of Argerich, Pletnev, and Volodos. Rosen does remark that depending on how you listen, some old performances can seem "breathtaking and knuckleheaded, dazzling and revolting." True; but compared to fifty years ago, there are more, not fewer, pianists playing like that.

Dutton is also very good on the defects of classical musical modernism, without just spluttering in rage about it. It is tempting to copy and paste about a yard more of his stuff, but I will content myself with this:

I'd not mind at least some discussion of the possibility that Boulez’s piano music just isn't as good as Liszt's.

Personally I'm not over-fond of Liszt's piano music either, but that's just me.

Thank you Arts & Letters Daily. Thank you, a lot.