Ivan Bilbin’s illustration to Pushkin’s Tale of the Golden Coquerel
Sometimes one’s own unconscious snobbery can deprive one of delightful experiences. When I first started to listen to classical music, as a teenager, I scrimped and saved to purchase recordings from the “bargain bins” in record stores. These were mostly cheap re-issue labels that had performances from a generation before — often brilliant ones, but with audio quality that was no longer acceptable to audiophiles. The pieces were the standard concert repertoire, including many pieces that were extremely popular with concert-goers, but not considered particularly “deep.” When you listen to a lot of music, you eventually tire of these concert work-horses, heard so many time, and stop playing them. As other, more arcane musical interests engage you, you forget about them. You “know” them, of course, but they sit in your record collection unplayed for years. Read more »