Recordings as documents — what a studio or live set captures, what it cannot, and which ones have earned their place on the shelf.
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A studio recording and a live recording are different documents of different events — confusing them produces confused listening.
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Fifty recordings of the same opera are not fifty versions of the same thing — they document different eras, technologies and ideas about what the work is.
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The sonic limitations are real. So are the performances inside them.
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A performance captured once and heard ten million times does something the composer never anticipated: it becomes the standard.