Daniel Barenboim: Memory vs Recollection

(from A Life In Music)

I believe you need to contemplate and recollect at a distance in order to express something in music. The most passionate moment in Wagner's Tristan und Isolde, for instance, can only be expressed after a certain degree of contemplation. Contemplation and recollection are as important to a performing musician as passionate involvement. There is a clear difference in English between recollection, and remembrance or memory. In music and musical performance this is an important distinction. A young man remembers and an old man recollects. Memory is something that immediately comes to your aid, whereas recollection can only come through reflection. Recollecting is an art for which you require skill in the use of illusion. To give a simple example: the sensation of feeling homesick although you are at home. This involves recollection and has little to do with memory. This is very important and creates a lot of problems for interpreters today, since we play so much music from memory. Recollection requires individual effort. Everything in musical performance depends on the power of recollection. In other words, even if you have learned Tristan und Isolde by heart, and know it by heart, and you can feel the white-heat intensity of the music, you must be able to recollect this white heat, not just remember it, and from one performance to another add up the sum of recollections you have.