If there was any truth in what you say it would be devastating. However, as you do not explain why you think it is disgraceful I cannot help you. That review has stood for 20 years with no complaints and Colin Clarke is an experienced reviewer who clearly states what he thinks of this recording in some detail. Perhaps you should do the same.
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;
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....
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.
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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;
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....
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.
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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.
Previous Message
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;
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....
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?
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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.
Previous Message
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.
Previous Message
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;
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....
As long as I can remember this set being generally available, it seems to have divided critical opinion, with one half finding it Kapellmeisterish and dull and the other half appreciating the Kapellmeisterish (and thus "traditional") approach and the distinctive sound of the Staatskapelle Dresden. Hurwitz has championed the set (and just did a "best ever" video on the Pastorale in the set) as has American Record Guide. Count me as one who derives great pleasure from the sound of this orchestra in Beethoven.
Robert - I would argue that widely contrasting reviews can be equally valid. As Ralph suggests, over a period of time I imagine readers develop a sense of reviewers whose opinions chime with their own. In my own experience I know that to be the case.
In the example of the post that started this debate; it would seem clear that the orginal reviewer preferred performances that emphasised HIP practice for Beethoven symphonies whilst the poster Szoze clearly felt that the calibre of Blomstedt and the Dresden orchestra was such as not to be disregarded or diminished. So a review - as the one I referenced above certainly was - that celebrated the history and legacy of the Dresden Staatskapelle was more likely to be to Szoze's own personal preference (as it happens I'd probably agree with him too!).
But that does not invalidate opposing opinions regarding the value of HIP performances.
Ultimately we all respond subjectively to any Art. Relying on any critic should come with a health warning - history is littered with famous critics making intemperate and way-wide-of-the-mark assessments of composers and their work.
Previous Message
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.
Previous Message
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;
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....
First, let me assure Robert that, as he will see when it is published, our ROTY this year was much more clearly determined by a general critical consensus, relieving us of the need for subjectivity.
Secondly, I must endorse CH's observations in that, as both a reader and a reviewer, I have found that punters soon learn which reviewers' opinions they trust and gravitate towards them. For example, any readership I have in my own specialist field of opera and the voice, knows which singers I like or dislike and I always try to give reasons based on specific criteria; we urge our reviewers to do the same but the elements of taste and subjectivity are unavoidable. I soon learned as a youth that my touchstones were J B Steane and Alan Blyth, yet to this day, over fifty years later, I do not always agree with them.
It is still surely better to publish several reviews of a recording even if there is no consensus among them; our readers are largely intelligent and informed and as such will make their own choices - and I often advise them to sample recordings for themselves on YouTube or on the sales websites rather than trust me.
It's possible Beethoven himself is to blame, in that the original poster might not actually like his music? Maybe 'March of the Trolls' might be more to their taste..?
Previous Message
First, let me assure Robert that, as he will see when it is published, our ROTY this year was much more clearly determined by a general critical consensus, relieving us of the need for subjectivity.
Secondly, I must endorse CH's observations in that, as both a reader and a reviewer, I have found that punters soon learn which reviewers' opinions they trust and gravitate towards them. For example, any readership I have in my own specialist field of opera and the voice, knows which singers I like or dislike and I always try to give reasons based on specific criteria; we urge our reviewers to do the same but the elements of taste and subjectivity are unavoidable. I soon learned as a youth that my touchstones were J B Steane and Alan Blyth, yet to this day, over fifty years later, I do not always agree with them.
It is still surely better to publish several reviews of a recording even if there is no consensus among them; our readers are largely intelligent and informed and as such will make their own choices - and I often advise them to sample recordings for themselves on YouTube or on the sales websites rather than trust me.
As a regular reviewer, I have found that I may quite often be at odds with fellow contributors, but that is a difference inherent in musical criticism and integral to how we operate on MusicWeb; anyone is free to demur on the Message Board by offering reasoned, alternative opinions and may indeed apply to offer what they see as a "corrective" review.
Well said, Ralph. I am sure that the great majority of contributors fully appreciate the MWI ethos, Happy New Year!
Previous Message
As a regular reviewer, I have found that I may quite often be at odds with fellow contributors, but that is a difference inherent in musical criticism and integral to how we operate on MusicWeb; anyone is free to demur on the Message Board by offering reasoned, alternative opinions and may indeed apply to offer what they see as a "corrective" review.
Well said, Ralph. I am sure that the great majority of contributors fully appreciate the MWI ethos, Happy New Year!
Previous Message
As a regular reviewer, I have found that I may quite often be at odds with fellow contributors, but that is a difference inherent in musical criticism and integral to how we operate on MusicWeb; anyone is free to demur on the Message Board by offering reasoned, alternative opinions and may indeed apply to offer what they see as a "corrective" review.
Previous Message