I have not written any reviews for several years, but, when I did, I gave the music itself priority when it was little known and readers would most likely be wanting to know if it could interest them. With a lot of the rarer repertoire, other performances are hard to find or non-existent, so detailed comments on the performance seem unnecessary unless there's reason to feel the composer is being misrepresented.
In the case of a well-known work, the priority is with the performance. Readers should know whether they like the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto or not, so the issue is how the new version stands against the many others.
I must say that, over the years, Jonathan Woolf (and not only Jonathan Woolf of course) has seemed to me to get these priorities consistently right.
I'd like to comment on a review and am very interested in what other readers think about my musings. The review concerned is the one by Jonathan Woolf on Philp Glass' 9th symphony, on http://www.musicweb-international.com/classrev/2012/Oct12/Glass_sy9_OMM0081.htm .This review exhibits a trait I've noticed in some other reviews on MWI and elsewhere: the reviewer shares his or her thoughts about the recorded work(s), but remains completely silent about the quality of the performance. I'm very interested in both: I want to know what the reviewer thinks about the works concerned, read about some of the history of and the context in which they were composed, etcetera, but I still read a review primarily to hear how the reviewer judges the quality of the performance. As far as I am concerned, the reviewer's thoughts about the quality of the performance of the work(s) in question are more important than what she or he wants to tell me about the work(s) per se, though I always enjoy reading those observations as well, and often learn something new from them. So, what do other readers of these pages think?
Regards, Jaap.
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