"Alas"

There are a lot of things in the world, and I quite like most of them. Some of the other things are not so good, but I certainly admit that they are part of the world too, so I don't rule out learning something from them - though I would like to make them better. But there is one thing that still rather annoys me. I suppose you could deduce something more general from what I'm about to tell you, but, at any rate, here is the thing that annoys me:

It annoys me when I read a review (I don't read reviews much, maybe because of this...) of some recording of Rachmaninov's Second Piano Sonata (B Flat Minor) and it says "which, alas, he performs here in the mutilated second version", or "unfortunately foregoing the far more interesting first version" (brackets, alas, close brackets) and so on and so on. I have never read a review of this work that didn't say something like that.

I have just decided to learn this piece, and I can tell you, each version has got some things going for it. But there is one person I care about in this matter, only one, and his name is Sergei Vassilievitch Rachmaninov. It was his idea to make the changes, so I am going to work on the assumption that he did have at least some tiny clue about how to do his job. I am prepared to consider the first version too, since I have it. But I don't at all think that I know better than S. V. R. If these people who say the above about this work think differently, they are welcome to produce recordings that match their lofty ideals. If they can...