I have not heard a live performance since 1958, when I conducted a piece of my own on a programme with it; but I have never heard a balanced one. The ‘wrong’ notes stick out wrongly in the ‘apocalyptic’ opening chord, despite recording engineers, nor can all of their periphonic faking pick up the string-figuration in the ‘Seid umschlangen, Millionen!’ the failure being not electronic but musical. Yet the greatest failure is in the ‘message’, hence, if you will pardon the expression, in the ‘medium’. For the message of the voices is a finitude greatly diminishing the message of the wordless music. And the first entrance of the voice is a shocking intrusion. The singer is as out of place as if he had strayed in from the prologue to Pagliacci.