Pseudo "authentic performance" agenda!

I see lately people trying to force some "authentic performance" agenda even on late 19th century composers! (I think in many cases it should be more accurately called "PSEUDO-authentic performance"!)

Speaking of Brahms, for example, I hate it when some approach his music as if he was a contemporary of ... Palestrina!!

Brahms outlived Wagner by 14 years! And Mahler died only 14 years after Brahms! (apparently Brahms even heard Mahler conduct and was impressed!)

Hans von Bülow and others were conducting first performances of music by Brahms as well as Wagner & Co with the SAME orchestras, SAME musicians, SAME sound!

If Brahms venerated Beethoven and his tradition, it doesn't mean that he was coming from the same sound world! In only a few years music had changed RADICALLY and many of those changes were assimilated by Brahms whether consciously or not! In fact who could even seriously say that Beethoven himself started and finished his own career in the same "sound world"?!

Look at Joachim for example - who was so important for Brahms! There are some recordings of him - yes he didn't use much vibrato, but his violin playing is no doubt romantic in style. I would even say his playing is in many ways more "romantic" than that of most violinists today! The amount of portamento he is using, the PASSIONATE sound and phrasing, the rubatos, etc!

Anyway, it's too late to continue ... But trying to put music in some sort of "museum" might only end up sterilizing it! Especially when the "exhibition" will probably not really be authentic even if presented so!

At the end of the day composers like Mozart were already re-orchestrating and playing the music of their predecessors in the "modern manner" - adding percussion, wind instruments etc. And think how excited Beethoven "jumped" on every new version of the piano of his day! It's VERY possible composers like Mozart and Beethoven would be more than happy to hear how their music was played by a modern 21st century orchestra, in which the instruments are actually in tune and the musicians play actually together - unlike in the "old" times! I would venture to say that is more in the spirit of what they wanted and did during their lifetime, than trying to put music in a "museum"!