The field of early music has expanded enormously: the principles of historically informed performance have now extended to the Classical and Romantic repertoire, revealing their ability to shed new light even on composers—such as Brahms—who, until recently, were thought to belong to an unbroken performing tradition, and thus beyond the reach of radical reinterpretation.
At the same time, the once rigid “authenticist” approach (not without its share of misconceptions) that marked the early stages of the so-called early music revival has given way to a more nuanced awareness—one that acknowledges both the inevitably contemporary character of interpretative choices (and sometimes their commercial motivations) and the necessity of preserving the aesthetic integrity of performance as an artistic act.