From the Times:

"It's as if somebody were to find a dozen new paintings by Rembrandt or a lost film of Charlie Chaplin," said Daniel Guss, director of the classical catalog for BMG Music, the successor to RCA, for which Kapell recorded.

Any such claims for anything in 20th century musical performance are pure hyperbole—certainly in the classical repertoire—but the comparison of Rembrandt to Chaplin is kind of interesting.

update: Thinking about the Afro-Celtic hybrids that are the basis of the great popular musical traditions of the last century, and their relationship to music-hall etc. (the world that produced Chaplin)

What does it mean when folk musical traditions, rather than being transformed into abstraction—classical music,  jazz—become formalized version of themselves? Is rock and roll a musical tradition, or a theatrical one? Was James Brown a musician or a performer, in the broader sense. Remember the old debate over whether the blues was folk music, or something else.

Opera and Hans Hotter.