Posted by Bob Brines [ 148.63.220.187 ] on October 07, 2005 at 12:42:38:

In Reply to: Dr. Lee and his review of RMAF posted by manualblock on October 05, 2005 at 08:03:51:

"All of the classical repretoir has been done...."

Well, sort of. The big name orchestras and conductors continue to crank out more versions of the main repertoire. We probably don't need another Beethoven symphony cycle. The smaller orchestras, though are mining any number of "minor" composes like Field and Hummel in the classical period and Chadwick and Hanson in the romantic.There is also some interesting work being done (well not exactly new) in the HIP (historic instrument performance) field. My personal Beethoven cycle is by Hogwood and the St. Martin-of-the-Fields orchestra. Very, very different from the standard romantic orchestra presentation. Also, compare Brueggen's Haydn Paris/London symphonies to a standard large orchestra performance.

My expertise lies in the baroque, and here there is an enormous repertoire yet to be mined. granted, we don't need another copy of Vivaldi's "Four Seasons", but how many good copies of the OTHER 8 concertos in Op.8 are there? Except for Op.8 #9, which is "the" oboe concerto, recorded too many times. But then how many recordings are there of Op.8 #9 on the original violin? Staying with Vivaldi, Manze and Carmignola are doing some fine work with the more obscure violin concertos with small orchestras, and using theorbe and archlute for for the continuo rather than harpsichord.

Bach to the standard repertoire. The record companies are re-releasing seemingly their entire pre-CD holdings. This is good and bad. A re-release costs only a minor fraction of a new performance, and with so many orchestras in financial trouble, this is not good. On the other hand, some of these old performances are very, very good and offer a look at performance practice of yester year. Also the sonics on some of those old "single-mic" recording is just hands down better than any of the multi-mic recordings of today.

In sum, the classical CD repertoire is in good shape. There is much more out there than I can afford.

Bob

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