William,
If you look again, you'll see that I never said the Stravinsky Rite was "good", I said that it gave a completely different take on the piece, particularly in relation to his other works. This is actually the big issue, isn't it...? You're talking about a good or bad performance in a very general way, in my opinion. For me, a good performance is not necessarily one which makes everyone sound lovely, it's one that captures the essense of the composition. In this sense the Strawinsky(!)/Craft recordings are invaluable -- yes, there are many more "beautiful" recordings, or more "powerful" recordings, but none of them capture that strangely brittle, percussive aspect of his works. It's almost as though he imagined *every* section of instruments as some unusual sort of percussion -- at least in the big tuttis... And it changes the sound of the orchestration quite dramatically. Nowhere is this more obvious than in the ending of his Firebird recording, where we *finally* hear all those big chords heavily accented, as their intended! The result is a completely different colour, with a curiously different blending of instuments. Whether "good" or "bad" is beside the point -- this was the way it was intended to sound, and I wish some more competent conductors would play it as it's written. Of course, the orchestra is falling apart all over the place... But Strawinsky wasn't a conductor. No argument there.
As far as the use of the word "romantic" goes, with reference to performances of StravavaWinsky, that is not my word. It was Stravinsky who generally made use of this term, so I should probably have used quotes. Basically, it's referring to a whole generation of conductors who became famous conducting Romantic works, and often failed to see the need for a different approach to any other type of music. These same conductors were also sharply criticized in the 80s and 90s, when "period instruments" became the big craze, for conducting Bach in the style of Mahler. That's all I'm talking about. Think of the difference between a "Karajan Mozart" and a "Harnoncourt Mozart"... Obviously, there's no "better" or "worse" reading, they're just different, and quite dramatically so. And you should know by now that I don't give a shit about "modern" or "romantic", so please let it rest. Particularly when it comes to equating "modern" with some perceived personality defect... Actually, I've generally suffered at the hands of performers who failed to see that my rhythmic writing is not, in fact, "modern", but rather (if I must use a period) more impressionistic. New music players tend to strive for an absolute rhythmic precision, which generally causes my music to sound much more angular and chaotic than it actually is... If you've ever sat in the audience and heard your music innocently slaughtered, by perfectly capable musicians who simply didn't know how it should sound (and how could they?), then you understand why I find the Stravinsky/Craft recordings invaluable. This actually relates to another thread (the one about "doing mock-ups at all" where I mention performance tradition), and the understanding of a composer's language... But that's another discussion.
Since we're talking about you, Mr. Strawinsky, I think Andy himself highlights the difference, in a very practical way, by mentioning the limited use of the performance tool in the Holst. I wouldn't necessarily say it's only that, but that certainly makes the difference clear. My experience has been that rhythmic complexity, speed, and a more off-the-beat style make midi breathe (while often making live performance, by all but the greatest musicians, 'congested'), and that rhythmic unison, non-legato writing, and slower passages are comparatively more difficult to realize with midi.
J.
