Vive la différence!

Without differences, there would be no need for new recordings or performances

The sheer variety and number of recordings, good and bad, keep classical music fresh and play a huge part in giving a piece its identity, says Tom Service

Radio 3 listener Eleanor Ironside asked one of the simplest but most profound questions about classical music. She was buying a recording of Britten’s The Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra, and was asked which recording she wanted. ‘What difference does it make?’, she asked, and was met with a look of bafflement from her supposedly helpful salesperson, as if the answer was self-explanatory.

It isn’t. In fact, Eleanor’s question sums up one of the most baffling barriers to anyone trying to get their heads round classical music. You don’t think about which version of The Beatles’ White Album you want – you just buy the record. You don’t look for different versions of Lady Gaga’s new album – you find it, and stream it. The recording is the only version you need, because it’s the definitive and the only version of itself.

That’s a tautologically simple statement, but it’s something we can’t say about the repertoires of classical music. Here’s the conundrum: what really is the phenomenon we call a Mozart symphony? It doesn’t exist only in the René Jacobs recording that magazines like this might recommend; but neither is it completely contained in the notes on the page of the printed score, and nor can it be defined by the last concert performance you heard.

Unlike the White Album, the totality of the phenomenon of a Mozart symphony isn’t something you can hold in your hand. It’s much more slippery. The most we might be able to say is that the concept of ‘Mozart’s Symphony No. 39’ encompasses all of the performances and recordings of the piece there have ever been – by orchestras large and small, on instruments modern and historical, at tempos fast and slow.

In fact, any piece of classical music is defined by the differences between all of its versions. It’s as ludicrous to say there’s a ‘best version’ of a symphony as it is to say there’s a ‘best’ oak tree in the world, as if the world only needs a single specimen. In fact, we need forests of them, just as we need all of those different interpretations of a Mozart symphony to reveal what it really is.

I think the answer to Eleanor’s question is this: in classical music, the differences make all the difference. Without them, there would be no need for new recordings or fresh performances – classical music could exist as a dust-accruing library of classic masterpieces, each with its own Best Recording, complete unto itself.

Thank goodness that’s not true. Classical music sometimes looks like an endless rehearsal of sameness: the same old pieces, played and recorded again and again. But in fact, it’s a dynamic multitude of differences, in all the new interpretations of music from Bach and Beethoven to Birtwistle and Benjamin that are celebrated in these pages made every month. Don’t look for a best recording – dive into the world of difference!

Tom Service explores how music works in The Listening Service on Sundays at 5pm