Were they giving highly praised and much loved mezzo soprano Christa Ludwig 'the treatment', or were they and conductor Bernstein just being artistically inept? (They sounded to me a bit like a circus band, lol.)
"Vocalist Disagrees With Bernstein's Tempo":-
I love this quote from Christa, given by Wikipedia in their general article about her:-
"In times where personalities are thinly sown, we have first class, yes excellent, musical practitioners, who lack intuition, imagination, and a feeling for composers, who, even though they lived in the past, can speak to us about today. Courage is needed to reveal one's own feelings in interpretation and not tell the audience with raised forefinger: 'The composer wanted it like this, and no other way.' But at the same time we singers must never forget that we are only the servants of the great minds who created all the wonderful pieces of music we enjoy today." – In My Own Voice (p.119) translated by Regina Domeraski.
She's referring of course to the sickness of modernity which is still threatening to prevail at the expense of civilised cultures all around the world. Left brain vs right brain. Clanky, callous and conceited calculation vs intuition, love, beauty and art.
