Modern/old

Again from the New York Times Book Review, this time from last week’s review, by Carlos Fuentes, of what sounds like a wonderful new translation of Don Quixote:

This Don Quixote [translated by Edith Grossman] can be read with the same ease as the latest Philip Roth and with much greater facility than any Hawthorne. Yet there is not a single moment in which, in forthright English, we are not reading a 17th century novel. This is truly masterly: the contemporaneous and the original coexist. Not, mind you, the “old” and the “new.” Grossman sees to it that these facile categories do not creep into her work. To make the classic contemporary: this is the achievement.

And this would be the great achievement, too, for performances of older classical music. Who can do what Grossman describes? Roger Norrington, I think, in his original-instrument Beethoven, which is fresh, brisk, and alive, full of power that feels both current and as if it’s from the 18th century.

Any other nominations?