Truly, if we think about classical music, you could make a rational argument that if there was ever a genre of music that you didn’t need star performers, it might be classical music. 

After all, the stars are REALLY guys (sorry, really, guys) like Beethoven, Bach and Mozart. What difference does a STAR really make anyway? Of course, this is a bit of a question posed simply to prompt an essay. In some cases, there are just people who possess innate or learned talent that far exceeds the norm - and they possess an ability to interpret in a way that reveals the deepest emotional resources of the composer. 

The names are familiar to a generation - Rubinstein playing Chopin, Pavarotti singing Puccini, Dinu Lipatti’s last recital, Maria Callas singing Tosca - are just a few examples. And the recording of these performances have actually called into question whether we even need new generations of artists since we have perfectly preserved performances that are almost impossible to surpass. (Don’t worry, it’s not just classical - heard of any good rock and roll bands under 40? Any jazz performers under 60?) But the real difference makers in all of this is actually us! Our ability to listen defines what we take away from the music.

And add this to the mix - to create a category of “great performers” and “good performers” is often blurred. I experienced this effect at a concert in Cambridge, MA with the late pianist Miecyslaw Horszowski when he was 95 years old - it was a December night, it was unbearably hot in the small room at Sanders Theater and the pianist was 15 minutes late when all of a sudden he was screaming at the top of his lungs...and then he walked out and performed Bach in an utterly magnificent manner. But yet few would place him in a “star” category.

I realize that we live by this - the faith that a great performance can come out of nowhere is why we listen, why we tolerate 64 performances of the same work. Because if we plow through all 64, we are probably likely to find a diamond in that collection. And it might not be the world-famous pianist or violinist, it might also be a less-travelled but respected college professor.

So in listening to this collection of “classical stars” we do acknowledge that the real star is the music, but that we rely on the interpreter to be an element of us, outside of us, hoping to show us something we hadn’t seen before. If they do, they are stars. They may not get the spotlight, but for a moment, they are stars.