Wordsworth and Coleridge used to say that the artist has to create the taste by which he is to be enjoyed (implying that this process often takes time and mental adjustment). In effect, Klemperer made the same point when he said, “You will get used to it, Walter.” Maybe my blind spots are cases where I haven’t yet got used to it (and, I fear, may not want to let that happen).
Reviews can sometimes help with the mental adjustment. For 40+ years I’ve listened to the 1960 La Scala Berlioz Troyens (or rather Troiani) for the sake of Kubelik’s conducting, in spite of what I always regarded as a hilariously inappropriate performance of the central role. Along comes one Ralph Moore, who describes that performance as “suitably heroic,” “virile but not stentorian,” and even, to my jaw-dropping amazement, “capable of some subtlety.” I go back and listen with fresh ears, and... yes, I can indeed recognize what Mr Moore is describing. My mind has been educated (in one tiny respect).
I hope blind spots can be cured. I’m not proud of mine. They make me narrow-minded, petty-minded, splenetic, bilious, bigoted, lacking in breadth of sympathy... everything that I am, and that I don’t want to be.
The more blind spots I have, the narrower my prison cell is, and the more real pleasures I’m missing out on. We all pity the people who can’t enjoy a recording (however great its other merits may be) if a certain performer (typically Callas or Sutherland or Del Monaco or Fischer-Dieskau) happens to be on it. “How much they’re missing!” we say. Ah, but are we ourselves so different?
Perhaps one day I will even learn to endure that interminable load of whining self-pity in bad German doggerel called Winterreise.
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