This list is for those of us who like Pablo Casals's "Brandenburg Concertos", Wanda Landowska's "Chromatic Fantasia and Fugue", Leopold Stokowski's arrangement of the "Chaconne", and Rosalyn Tureck's "Well-Tempered Clavier". This List is for those of us who think that there has never been a better recording of "Messiah" than the one Sir Thomas Beecham made in 1948 or a more stirring recording of the Concerti grossi, Op.6, than Herbert von Karajan's.

If you don't gag in "Fantasia" when the "Toccata and Fugue in D Minor" begins, if you like Wendy Carlos, Jacques Loussier, Glenn Gould, and Don Dorsey, if you're fed to the back teeth with the arch and condescending Performance Practice Puritans who try to make you feel like a second class citizen every time you stand up for your right to believe that Edwin Fischer's recording of the Handel "Chaconne in G" is the best ever, then this list is for you.

I hope that there will be lively and friendly discussion of the issues, and I also hope that the BachPariahAndHandelAnathema List will become a center for the exchange of information about what early recordings of the music of Bach, Handel and other early composers can tell us about the performance practice of earlier periods.

Let's enjoy. After all, now we have our sandbox to play in!

Welcome aboard!

The HIP Woolly Mammoth

PS: Be sure to visit The HIP-ocrisy Home Page at:

http://www.npj.com/homepage/teritowe/hipindex.html