Breeding contempt

The reaction of the vocal coach (see previous post) to seeing the title of the Strauss song in a way she had never seen before reminds me of a similar story of something new clashing with something ingrained. Several years ago during rehearsals with a modern symphony orchestra, I was talking to a fellow violinist about my interest in baroque violin and early music. This guy was (and still is) a fantastic violinist, but was frankly quite uninterested in the world of early music and period performance. I could tell he was skeptical of the whole idea, perhaps thinking that it resulted in expressionless music.

I thought differently, of course, and in an effort to persuade him, I suggested that I would bring in a recording I had of Rachel Podger playing Bach's unaccompanied Sonatas and Partitas, a fantastic rendition which I would still place in the top tier of any other recording (both modern and baroque) that I've ever heard. He agreed that he would listen to it and tell me what he thought.