Everything you say just enforces my point that such contrasting opinions and a total lack of consensus do not help the reader to make up their mind but do the exact opposite, which is the reason I wrote my post. By extension your points basically lead to the conclusion that all those old Penguin and Gramophone guides are a waste of paper.
As a long term reader of reviews and purchaser of discs my experience doesn't chime with your take on how readers choose what to buy. I don't give equal weight to reviews or reviewers. For example Ralph Moore has clearly listened to a lot more Bruckner than I, or probably most people have, so for that reason I give his opinion on Bruckner more weight than I would to someone who doesn't know the music so well. For the same reason I would give more weight to a reviewer who actually knows a score and has experience interpreting it than I would to a reviewer who can't read music. This is part of the reason why I used to trust reviewers like Lionel Salter more than others.
If there is so little consensus about what is correct, or at least good, musical interpretation and performance, how do we teach it to the next generation of musical performers? And if the same is true for recording standards how or what do you teach those wanting to become sound engineers?
I'm sorry to disappoint you, Robert, but there are few things in this life over which a consensus exists. I wouldn't expect two mathematicians to give two different answers to a mathematical problem, because mathematics is not an opinion, but most other things are. Do we expect political commentators to reach a consensus so we know definitively who to vote for? If you go to three doctors, you may get three diagnoses or, even if the diagnoses are the same, three recommended treatments. Music criticism always has been like this. In my younger days I avidly read Gramophone, Records and Recording and the EMG Monthly Letter and noted how a recording lauded in one would likely be trashed in one of the others (EMG in trashing mood could be devastating). The disarming feature of MWI is that you might get the contrasting views under one roof, which is just as wel since only one of the three magazines mentioned remains (and is a shadow of its old self).
Wolfgang Sawallisch once related how, after his first piano recital (he was originally a pianist), he turned eagerly to the papers. The first said he was very musical but had a poor technique. The second said he had a fine technique but was completely unmusical. After that, he never read a review again. And what about Neville Cardus who, after his first experience of Don Giovanni in a provincial theatre, walked the streets in a daze, so overwhelmed was he. Only to read Edward Dent's comment in the morning paper: "Rather than have a Don Giovanni like this, better have no Don Giovanni at all".
Music criticism just is like this. You read the opposite views and then, if the repertoire or interpreters interest you, you buy the disc anyway, or find a way to hear it. Reviewers can tell us a few objective facts like, are all repeats taken, has the score been altered in any way (older performances of Beethoven usually were), are there cuts (older performances of Traviata are unlikely to be complete), are original or modern instruments used, but as to the deeper issue of what the music or the performance communicates, this is all opinion.
As to this "unfathomable" review, it looks clear enough to me, if this is unfathomable, I should have thought most reviews here (including probably all of mine) would fail Szoze's fathomability test.
Hello Nick
It's debatable but contrasting opinions may be equally valid but I don't see how they can help readers to make their own minds up, isn't it more likely to lead to the opposite?
If two reviewers have such widely different opinions about the same recording how is the reader supposed to choose which one to buy? As a reader of record reviews it can be interesting to encounter contrasting opinions but ultimately I expect to encounter a consensus, to a greater or lesser extent, among knowledgeable and experienced reviewers whose opinions I trust more than my own as to which recordings are the best in a market that has multiple versions on offer. That for me is the very crux of record reviewing. To be a trustworthy guide, i.e. buy this, don't buy this and to explain why. If one reviewer says 'black' and another says 'white' about the same recording of core repertoire, isn't there a real risk of readers throwing their hands up and saying if the reviewers can't agree what chance have I got?. What's the point in reading reviews, if the experts can't agree?
This is connected to a point I raised last year about the Recording of the Year. I would expect a recording of the year to be seen as such by at least the majority of reviewers and not just one among a long list of reviewers favourites.
Helpful, worthwhile record reviewing, like a school curriculum has to be based on more than mere subjective opinion. There have to be criteria upon which those who have invested the time and effort into music and its recorded history can agree on to some degree. If not it's just a free-for-all, where anything goes, which I dont think helps anyone to make up their mind.
One of the great joys and strengths of MWI is the broad church of its opinions and its willingness to publish multiple reviews. As it happens the complete Blomstedt/Dresden/Beethoven cycle received a "deja review" just last August;
https://musicwebinternational.com/2024/08/beethoven-symphonies-nos-1-9-brilliant-classics/
where reviewer Neil Horner writing originally in 2002 heaped praise on this cycle and especially Symphonies 5&6. Another example of MWI offering contrasting but equally valid opinions which will surely help the reader make their own minds up....
Hi
This review is really completely unfathomable and is a disgrace to MusicWeb. It should simply be removed.
https://www.musicweb-international.com/classrev/2003/Aug03/Beethoven56_Blomstedt.htm
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