[Nicolai P. Zwar]

Of course, the differences between two Shakespeare performances may be more obvious right away, different actors, costumes etc. However, the gusto of the piece may nevertheless be the same.
Some compositions are so delicate, a bad performance ruins it, even if all the notes are there. (I’ve recently seen that in a movie scene, where a character played Beethoven’s sonata No. 14 because she had to… all the notes were there, but no life at all, it was a dead corpse. (As was the intent of the scene.)

As far as time, we all get to decide what to spend it on. Some people watch the same movie ten times… even though they could watch new movies. It’s funny that in the Let’s Talk about collections and listening habits! thread, Thor mentioned that he gets the dilemma of listening to new scores, which takes up the time he could have used listening and re-listening to old stuff.

Ah, old or new, that is the question.

I have actually limited time for music, I listen to maybe one or two albums a day, at most. So I have to choose wisely what I listen to, and it’s a mix of the new and familiar. However, I count listening to a previously unknown recording of a new work as “new”, and listening to Brahms’ fourth by Gardiner was certainly listening to “new” music, even though I know the symphony itself quite well. Tonight it’s John Field’s Nocturnes, and album I acquired last year but haven’t listened to yet.
Composer was hitherto unknown to me, so to my ears, it’s new music.

It’s a beautiful recording, I have no alternate versions of these pieces. (Yet?)