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Posted by Tony Reinhardt-Rutland (a) the changes in the recording industry: a massive increase in the number of recordings, often produced by artists that would never have been recorded twenty or so years ago. To choose an example at random, I should never have expected that Grand Canaria could produce a full-scale symphony orchestra, let alone one that is in any way accomplished - yet that is what I hear in Adrian Leaper's admirable recording of Mahler's 7th Symphony on the Arte Nova label. My point: the attempt at subtle comparison that can be applied a small number of recordings of a given work - the sixties produced no more than three or four Mahler 7s - is no longer feasible. (b)the dawning realization that some of the past critique may have often been prejudiced and at times downright misleading. For example, I remember one Gramophone reviewer's take on Bruckner. He seemed too easily caught up in a Zeitgeist that regarded any Brucker recording not emanating from the likes of Berlin, Vienna or - at a pinch - Chicago as dubious. Add in overblown metaphors invoking mountain climbing, and I now rate this reviewer as having been at the least unhelpful. To be sure, I still scan the reviews - even Gramophone's reviews, although I do prefer what the web has brought forth... - but I can no longer take any review too seriously.
on January 4, 2007, 12:18 pm, in reply to "Re: The Decline of Gramophone"
193.61.136.103
I am rather equivocal about the changed standards of Gramophone magazine. This entails two interrelated issues:
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