Why I don’t trust critics but read them anyway

When I was 13, I started to listen to classical music. It was the usual story: boy sees Star Wars (the original one before it was called Episode 4), boy listens to the music from Star Wars; boy starts listening to other film music and likes the sound of the orchestra. Radio 2 starts playing ‘Hooked on Classics’ (a medley of classical tunes set to a disco track) and the boy starts buying compilations of classical music before bravely buying a whole work (I think it might have been Mozart’s 40th Symphony). From there on, my pocket money was spent on classical LPs. In those days, you could get them from Woolworths and WH Smiths for around £2. As a student at a very ordinary state school, I had very little exposure to classical music and no-one around me to guide or share my interest. It was only after I joined the junior department of Trinity College of Music that I had anyone to talk to about pieces that I had heard or about different performers.

This being the case, I learned a lot about composers and their works by reading the sleeves notes on LPs and by borrowing from the limited supply of music books in the local library. It was on an afternoon in the library that I came across The Gramophone magazine – a long-established publication which reviewed classical music recordings and featured articles on different works and performers. Shortly after this discovery, I asked my dad if we could cancel my weekly comic and subscribe, instead, to The Gramophone. Over the next thirty years, I never missed a issue and had each one saved and bound for reference. I quickly recognised which writers I agreed with or respected and learned a lot about music and about interpretation from their articles. (After a while, I also came to recognise personal bias and lazy journalism). Apart from the educational value, I think this reading probably provided a substitute for the lack of discussion with other music-lovers. Although I stopped buying The Gramophone some years ago, my habit of seeking out reviews of recordings continues to this day. Sometimes I like to see if other people agree with my assessment of a performance but often, when deciding which recording to listen to, I like to get some idea of how a performer approaches the work. Perhaps I should trust to chance a little more.

My referral to their work notwithstanding, I have a dislike of much modern-day musical ‘criticism’. There are a few reasons for this. Firstly, the purpose of such writing is surely to inform the reader. For this to happen, the writer must relay facts. One might think that was a fairly straightforward task and yet it is one in which critics are often unsuccessful. An example: as a student I attended a performance or Vaughan Williams’s 6th Symphony. The next day, I read a review which said that the opening of the symphony had been taken too quickly. I was a little surprised as I thought it had been well-paced. I then read a second review which said the opening had been taken too broadly.  Surely the tempo of a movement should be easily recognised and described? It can’t be too fast and too slow at the same time! Of course, the problem is that too many critics present opinion as fact: “too fast”, “too slow”, “too loud” etc. when each judgement should be prefaced with a phrase such as “in my opinion…” or “to my ears…”.

Critics give far greater weight to their statements when they give specific details and/or refer back to the score. A well-known and very divisive online critic (unfortunately given to making sweeping statements and occasional personal attacks against performers) does often give detailed reasons for his judgements. Quite recently he gave a strongly argued criticism of a recording by the very popular conductor John Wilson (which had been highly praised by many journalists) by detailing many places where Wilson deviated from the composer’s instructions. It was a very good piece of musical criticism. This can be quite frustrating as I find myself wishing that he would maintain this approach to his journalism and forego the sensationalist and sometimes offensive comments that he sprinkles so liberally over his writing. Perhaps a comparison would be with Piers Morgan, who is capable of sensible interviewing but prefers to invite headlines with outrageous lines of questioning. The effect of the critic’s inconsistency is that he gains notoriety but loses credibility with many music-lovers. Perhaps in the modern world, respect and credibility is less important than viewing figures.

Unsupported statements and opinions masquerading as facts can be infuriating enough. Something that I find worse and, in fact, genuinely offensive, is a journalist’s arrogance. This usually comes in the form of a statement such as “the pianist does not understand the relationship between…”. Those three words: “does not understand” smack of the greatest hubris. By the time a pianist performs or records a great work (let’s say the Liszt B Minor Sonata), they have studied and practised it for hundreds of hours over a very long period. They will have lived with it and worked on it bar-by-bar as well as playing the whole 28 minutes in its entirety. For a critic who has never played that work or, perhaps, never even played the piano (and not all critics are practising musicians ) to dismiss a musician’s efforts with such ease is appalling arrogance. The critic may well have heard every performance of the piece ever put to disc, but they are learning ‘second-hand’ and there really is a huge difference between ‘knowing’ a piece and actually performing  it.

Personal bias (sometimes bordering on sycophancy) also creeps into writing, sometimes subtly and sometimes shamelessly. One critic in The Gramophone used to show such obvious bias for certain conductors, that one could guess his recommendation before reading his article. We all have our preferences (I certainly do) but I am not above admitting when a favourite musician’s performance left me disappointed or when I disagreed with a musical decision they had taken. Surely honesty is the best policy?

And so, I confess to a general dislike of critics despite my respect for some of them (example: Vaughan Williams’s biographer, the late Michael Kennedy was a wonderfully honest but modest journalist whose love for the music always shone through). Nevertheless, I shall continue to read their articles and reviews (old habits die hard) until I find myself in a position to discuss and debate performances and recordings with live people!