To perform or not perform before live audiences, that is. The question was

sparked by the career of the crazed genius Glenn Gould, who at age 31 decided to give up live performance, with all its tension and hassles, and instead only produce recordings, where, as WFB paraphrases him, "you can get it: just right." Mr. Page, who edited The Glenn Gould Reader, is inclined to agree with his late friend that recordings are now more important than live concerts; Miss Tureck, performer par excellence, sees the point but adds: "The communication that takes place between certain artists and the audience is something that cannot be measured. I feel that at such moments one reaches the highest level of communication with human beings." A high point of this spirited conversation is Mr. Chapin's account of sidling into a shop (only after he had retired from the Met) in search of a pirated recording of Nilsson and Vickers in Tristan und Isolde, and being greeted by the shop owner, who said, "Mr. Chapin, we've been waiting

for you."