Late Beethoven is now a commodity to be bought by the set, put on for background to cooking or reading or puttering around in your too-busy-to-sit-still-and-wonder existence.
At any rate, you have heard it all before. So what is the point?
Now that live performance resembles CD production more than it does real live experience it is so refreshing to hear a recorded performance that is charged with vitality--it really stands out.
What would happen if everyone in the audience demanded that kind of vitality from the player? Trouble is, the opposite is more likely to be true: if the performance is not like "the" CD it is likely to be deemed inferior. What we are missing....
