The spectre of ‘historically-informed’ performance can leave a bitter taste in the mouth. This is far from an uncommon or novel disposition. Theodor Adorno, writing in 1951, emphasised the illusory objectivity on which the idea of Werktreue (‘faithfulness to the original’) is predicated: “objectivity is not left over once the subject is subtracted”. A less cerebral reaction of 1977 by Gérard Zwang (apparently a disreputable sexologist) raged against “malignant tumours in the body of music”, which he called “worthless antiquarianism”. Yet, despite a plethora of criticism against its often reactionary and ahistorical tendencies, period revivalism is firmly integrated into mainstream performance practice today. An obvious example might be a conventional interpretation of a Mozart minuet, with ‘authentic’ rapidity of tempo and a restrained left-hand. To my mind, these limit the possibilities of witty intrigue, grace and genuine pleasure.

Robert Levin, this year’s Humanitas Visiting Professor in Chamber Music, throws a spanner in the works. He is an irresistibly talented pianist and a scholar whose approach to the completion of Mozart’s scores through extant fragments might be described as ‘licence’, but really amounts to larceny. As the Humanitas Visiting Professor, he offered a series of lecture-recitals that culminated in a concert that paired Mozart with Beethoven.

There is no doubting his technical abilities, as both a keyboard player and a musicologist steeped in the harmonic language of eighteenth-century Europe. Yet I am rather suspicious of the idea that one can imagine oneself into an eighteenth-century (let alone Mozartian) mindset, which seems to me to be the nub of Levin’s project. Even if one can, I have reservations whether one should.

His first lecture-recital was titled ‘Improvising Mozart’. My own prejudice was that, if one is going to improvise a cadenza, then it is more interesting and less duplicitous to play something unapologetically of one’s own time, rather along the lines of Stockhausen’s (albeit transcribed) cadenzas for Mozart and Haydn. Levin’s presentation forced us to rethink these terms. John Rink, Professor of Musical Performance Studies in the Faculty of Music, suggested to me that “Levin does not regard his own versions as ‘authentic’ or binding: they reflected decisions and choices made ex tempore, having as much to do with ‘Levin’ as with Mozart.”

Referring to Levin’s insight that “Mozart’s cadenzas never modulate to new keys,” Rink commented: “On the one hand, this could serve as a model for the modern improviser, but whether one chooses to change key in improvising a cadenza to a Mozart concerto in this day and age is a matter of personal decision, not something that ‘must’ be done according to Mozartian precedent.” Nonetheless there remains a stylistic impasse. Reflecting on the demise of improvisational tradition in Western classical music, Nikolaus Harnoncourt, a key figure in the early-music movement, has argued that “it is fake if the musician improvises in style.” In Harnoncourt’s 2009 performance of the Haydn C-Major Cello Concerto, the soloist Clemens Hagen used a cadenza written by Georg Friedrich Haas that incorporated quartertones and extended techniques. Moreover, an audience is surely as crucial as a performer to any historical enterprise, as an engine of reconstruction. Does this obstacle not de-legitimise the project from its birth?

Levin’s lecture-recitals were played out using a fortepiano bestowed by Christopher Hogwood, an eminent conductor and musicologist and one of Cambridge’s own. This association serves as a reminder that Cambridge has been a major intellectual fulcrum for period revivalism in the twentieth century.

There are several current examples vindicating this tradition as alive and well. David Skinner, Director of Music at Sidney Sussex College, has recorded a new CD of medieval English carols from the fifteenth-century ‘Trinity Carol Roll’ in the Wren Library, Trinity College. Jesus College recently acquired a magnificent new harpsichord made by Bruce Kennedy and based on the famous 1728 Zell model. Its inaugural recital by Mahan Esfahani combined renditions of both J. S. and C. P. E. Bach, with three ‘Dances in Bulgarian Rhythm’ by Béla Bartók; this was an inspired decision, underlining a fruitful synchrony that Levin’s approach might seem to discourage. Indeed, the much-acclaimed and ongoing series of ‘cantata evensongs’ by the St John’s College Choir blends period instruments with no obviously dogmatic intention to sing in the idiom of early eighteenth-century Leipzig. In the context of a liturgical performance, the results are curiously thrilling.

Equally thrilling, yet somewhat more problematic, was Levin’s concluding concert. This offered two Allegro movements from Mozart’s sonatas K.400 and K.452 (reconstructed by the pianist), and two wind quintets, Mozart’s K.452 and Beethoven’s Op. 16. My point is not to quibble with execution given the ‘period’ constraints–Levin and the players from the Academy of Ancient Music displayed a level of virtuosity that is among the world’s best –but to challenge the premise of using period instruments, unreliable and out-of-tune, in order to recreate an eighteenth-century style presumed to be in reach.

John Rink’s observation that Levin’s various presentations “offered a vivid reminder that music does not exist in a single, ‘right’ version” might stand. Levin is without doubt a special case. Ultimately, the ‘authenticke’ brigade have to offer an aesthetic defence of their project and to counter the claim that the attempt at historical reconstruction of musical performance represents a museum culture that lacks progressive ends. Professor Robert Levin’s residency was impressive and his enthusiasm for his subject was infectious. Yet away from his brilliant rhetoric, I’m still unconvinced by the project. A circle remains to be squared.