Music
Critic or conductor?
Peter Phillips
I'm coming to the conclusion that there are two quite distinct kinds of concert reviewer. On the one hand are those con- cerned with the strength of the interpreta- tions they have heard, along with the artists' ability to put these across; on the other those who think that they should have been conducting the concert them- selves, taking the column inches vouch- safed them as an opportunity to demonstrate how well they could have done the job. In a way these would-be prac- titioners are in a position of authority, since they have evidently given the perfor- mance of the music in question some thought; but it is plainly unsatisfactory that in this kind of review attention is focused not on what has actually been done but on what might have been done on a different occasion, no doubt with different perform- ers. Since I have suffered repeatedly at the pens of these frustrated know-alls I put the question whether, outside the specialist press, it is ever helpful to publish reviews of this sort.
The division is essentially between reviewers who specialise in the standard symphonic and operatic repertoires and those who customarily review early and contemporary music. It is stock-in-trade for the former to know something of the his- torical background to the pieces in hand, to be able to detail it as necessary in an uncomplicated way, perhaps to tell an anecdote about the composer or the origi- nal performers; and then to move on to the nub of the matter, which involves giving a personal reaction to the strengths and weaknesses of a particular performance, which will either in so many words or by inference distinguish it from the countless hundreds of other performances of that same music which we will no doubt have heard in the course of a long life. It would be a brave writer indeed who dedicated a review of an opera starring Pavarotti to the discussion of why his top D flat should have been a B flat and that his pronuncia- tion of early 19th-century Italian was inau- thentic.
Reviewers of early music tend to be aca- demics who, by profession, are not interest- ed so much in the strengths of individual interpretations as in the absolute rightness of their own theories. You might say that the conductors of early music have to be academics too, if they wish to stand a chance of putting together a viable perfor- mance of anything these days, and that a judgment of their scholarship as witnessed in action is a perfectly satisfactory way of appraising what they do. In my experience, however, the most successful authentic- style performers are those who in the first instance are excellent on stage, and only secondarily are interested in boning up on some of the finer details, prior to launching a new project, by reading a few books. To write up a John Eliot Gardiner rendition of a major work with internationally acclaimed soloists by saying that the pitch couldn't possibly have been as given, or the instrumentation must have been different 200 years ago, or the size of the chorus that night was out of all contention is baffling for the public and dispiriting for the per- formers: in short, beside the point.
The most eccentric example of this kind of reviewing that I have come across recently is in Gramophone magazine, from a specialist in Gregorian chant. Apparently without embarrassment this scholar is capable of writing a whole review — during which, in so prominent a publication, the reputation of the record may be made or broken for all time — discussing almost nothing other than the singing of the chant on discs where chant makes up only a tiny fraction of the whole. The long-term prob- lem with this kind of writing is that it helps to parochialise the performers' endeavour, reducing the chance of convincing symphony-sized audiences that they would like to come to hear an alternative way of doing over-exposed repertoire or, indeed, that they would be prepared to try some alternative repertoires for the first time.
It is true that these questions of pitch, scoring and timbre fundamentally affect what the concert-goer eventually hears. My belief is that the arguments for and against any particular question of performance practice should be reserved for the several specialist journals which are available for their rehearsal, and that a performance be heard as an end in itself. This performance may then be cited in future debate amongst the specialists as evidence for or against their view. General music criticism, like conducting, is a reputable profession, pre- supposing professional standards and com- mitment. If academics wish to become critics or conductors (one or the other, not both) they should say so openly and stop fighting their battles by proxy.
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