They Can’t Be New

The classical music industry is awash in reissues these days, with the aim of marketing to the nostalgia of an aging audience that can still remember learning a Brahms symphony at the business end of a phonograph. But all the remastered CDs in the world can’t replicate the enjoyment those old records brought, writes Bernard Holland, and it’s not the snap, crackle, and pop of analog recordings that’s missing, either. “We still love the Schubert symphonies, perhaps more than ever, but the excitement, the stabs of discovery, have modulated into a broader, slowly rising plane of experience, drawing on the many recordings and concerts heard since, and with a lot more room for thought.”