Reactions to the Record II

I am safely home from Reactions to the Record II, the second Stanford University Music Department symposium on early recordings, musical style, and the future of performance. I spent most of today doing nothing much, because my head is stuffed full of interesting and challenging information, recordings, people I met, etc. The symposium was again fabulous - all hail Kumaran Arul and George Barth, the organizers. I am again hoping that next time the publicity will be better; it seems that the word got out late, and I am sure there could have been a larger audience.

I never finished blogging the 2007 symposium, and so I am going to get started RIGHT NOW on the 2009 symposium.

To get the only bad news out of the way first, I am sure you will all be shocked, shocked, to hear that I have more CDs than when I left home. This time around, I picked up three sets from Arbiter (and check out that web site, as I did this morning, discovering a bunch more sets I want):Busoni and His Disciples (Buson, Ley, Petri); Oskar Fried: Mahler's Disciple; Huberman in recital, 1936-1944. I know, I shouldn't have, but I did. More about Arbiter and its mastermind, Allan Evans, later in my report.