I loved classical music from my earliest days. These questions of who are the greatest of players goes right back. When I was just out of my teens my very first partner and I argued passionately (drunkenly?) over Heifetz V Oistrakh... we partied all night then came home and put on Brahms or Beethoven and made these exact same comparisons... that was nearly some 40 years ago now, sigh.
Back then I was an opinionated youth lol (have we really changed?) and Heifetz was then my absolute go to... so now I’ve likely got somewhere over 25,000 hrs of classical listening into this small life (and then at least as much time up for jazz and almost as much time again for everything from punk right through to contemporary RnB) that while I love still Heifetz and Oistrakh and Kogan and Milstein and all the other great players but for me I can appreciate them all in ways but in comparison to the great composers like Bach or Beethoven or Brahms or Tchaikovsky none of the playing virtuosi while very much marvels are not yet for me as gods.
So if there is a competition and a hierarchy of greatness the true orders of magnitude are for me much more with the composers. The great players are to me phenomenal interpreters, great artists and gifted but for me it remains the composers that are the true and great original music gods and on a playing field of their own making.
I suppose we fixate a bit on the performers and the performances (I have as well) because that is what we most immediately see and hear and only through the players do most of us then come to know the music’s maker. We drink deeply of their draft.
But to me after time it is in origination and creation that any and all other music potentials are born. I’d imagine that in true wonder that possibly even the greatest of players might just always defer to the maker... the players as mortals and the creators as gods. I somehow doubt that a Heifetz or a Kogan or a Oistrakh or a Milstein would likely see it any other way.
Back then I was an opinionated youth lol (have we really changed?) and Heifetz was then my absolute go to... so now I’ve likely got somewhere over 25,000 hrs of classical listening into this small life (and then at least as much time up for jazz and almost as much time again for everything from punk right through to contemporary RnB) that while I love still Heifetz and Oistrakh and Kogan and Milstein and all the other great players but for me I can appreciate them all in ways but in comparison to the great composers like Bach or Beethoven or Brahms or Tchaikovsky none of the playing virtuosi while very much marvels are not yet for me as gods.
So if there is a competition and a hierarchy of greatness the true orders of magnitude are for me much more with the composers. The great players are to me phenomenal interpreters, great artists and gifted but for me it remains the composers that are the true and great original music gods and on a playing field of their own making.
I suppose we fixate a bit on the performers and the performances (I have as well) because that is what we most immediately see and hear and only through the players do most of us then come to know the music’s maker. We drink deeply of their draft.
But to me after time it is in origination and creation that any and all other music potentials are born. I’d imagine that in true wonder that possibly even the greatest of players might just always defer to the maker... the players as mortals and the creators as gods. I somehow doubt that a Heifetz or a Kogan or a Oistrakh or a Milstein would likely see it any other way.
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