[Thor Joachim Haga]

Coming back to a beloved symphony through a new recording is like returning to a favorite garden in a new spring. The lake, the trees, the hills, yes, they are all still there. But the colors, the light, the wind, the small living things that animate the place, the flowers, the butterflies, the ducks… those change, those are new. And suddenly the familiar becomes unfamiliar in the best possible way. That is how I hear music, that is how I see music, and that is why I dislike the idea of “the one definitive recording.”. That’s like King Haggard locking up all the Unicorns because he loved their beauty, thereby destroying it. Music isn’t a fossil to put under a glas. It breathes. It shimmers. It refuses to be locked into a single set of bits and bytes. And I feel very passionate about it.

I love your descriptions there, Nick. I can perfectly understand why that is an attractive part of enjoying music. But I think for me, I’ve always been more WORK-centric than PERFORMANCE-centric in my approach to music.