Where ‘early music’ at the start of the 1970s had meant ensembles specializing in medieval music or Monteverdi, during the 1980s performers on period instruments, and conductors pointing to support for their interpretations in studies of period practice, gradually took on a large part of what had hitherto been in the repertory of standard symphony orchestras, notably Bach, Haydn and Mozart. Soon historically informed performance became the new orthodoxy, and dizzying discoveries came: the most familiar music was refreshed, the previously marginal magnified and the unknown—even the unnotated—brought to life after centuries.

Brahms

Time is being swallowed up and the race is on. Having cleared the century and more from Bach to Berlioz during the 1980s, leading exponents of period performing style are now well into the next generation. That was marked this week when Roger Norrington and the London Classical Players began the assault on Brahms. If they continue at this rate they will be on to Boulez by the end of the century, and then we can all forget about the music of the past. Everything will have been done. The LCP, the English Baroque Soloists, the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment and the rest of them will all be waiting eagerly for the next Brian Ferneyhough premiere so that they can follow with an authentic performance.

Enticing though this prospect may be, there is something a little worrying about the present gallop through history, and not least the implicit assumption that once a piece has been delivered onto compact disc it has been dealt with.