It's Just a Record

I make absolutely no secret of being a wildly enthusiastic record collector. Some might call it an addiction. But they just don't know a good time when they see one.

In my enthusiasm/addiction/madness, I make it a point to read the web sites and magazines that pertain to classical record collecting. In particular, ClassicsToday and MusicWeb International online, and Gramophone both in print and online. I try to listen to intriguing new releases via Tidal or Idagio, and if I'm really taken with the thing, I'll go ahead and buy myself a copy—these days, via a download.

CD reviewers (I'll use the term loosely as applying to any media, including downloads) have a leg up over their brethren, concert critics. That's because CD reviewers are talking about a commodity that can be purchased by readers, unlike concert reviewers who are performing a post mortem on something that already happened, and thus their words, whether praise or condemnation, serve next to no purpose. One can read a damning review of a particular recital and think Whew, I'm sure glad I didn't waste any time going to THAT show; it must have been downright stinky-poo. But that's about it. On the other hand, a CD review might very well inspire people to go out and buy the thing. Certainly I have been inflamed with collector's lust by a sufficiently pornographic review. On the other hand, I rarely pay attention to those S&M affairs in which the reviewer is moved to cut the performer(s) a new one. I'll make up my own mind, thank you very much.

It doesn't take all that long to get a particular reviewer's number. As one might expect, record reviewers range from the unfailingly courteous to the just as unfailingly shrill. One reviewer might have developed a soft spot for, or possibly a crush on, a particular performer who is then deemed to walk on water. That same reviewer might develop a vendetta against yet another performer, who is thereafter suspected of ripping holes in the very fabric of the musical universe. In neither case is the extremism justified. Performers have their on days and their off days. Nobody's discography is all one thing or the other.

Consider the conductor Daniel Harding. I heard him in San Francisco at the helm of the Staatskapelle Dresden; he shepherded that inimitable band through completely satisfying performances of the Beethoven 4th piano concerto (with Rudolph Buchbinder as soloist) and the Brahms 2nd Symphony. I have also several Harding recordings in my collection, all of them with first-rate ensembles, all of them perfectly fine performances. But Harding has somehow elicited the implacable enmity of an American record critic. You would think from the coverage that Harding was incapable of giving so much as a downbeat without screwing it up royally. But that's not true. Whether or not he's another Arthur Nikisch, he's a good, hardworking conductor with a solid track record at the helm of some of the world's finest orchestras. There is no way he deserves the lashings he gets from this particular reviewer. But there it is.

I suppose all reviewers have their little darlings. Not too many years ago we were all treated to the spectacle of a bunch of them falling prey to collective blind adoration. An elderly British lady named Joyce Hatto was releasing a veritable torrent of piano recordings, all made in a studio set up at her home courtesy of her loving husband. The story was that she was determined to pass on her legacy before she died from cancer. She was systematically recording pretty much the entire piano repertory, including seriously nasty challenges like the Godowsky paraphrases of the Chopin etudes. Nobody much seemed to question how a frail old lady suffering from cancer could do that.

A lot of folks smelled a rat—myself included—even without hearing any of the CDs in question. But the reviewers were having a ball, praising her to the skies anew with each release. Of course it was a fraud. Her husband was pirating recordings by other pianists and fobbing them off as being by his wife, sometimes stooping even to alter the speed of some tracks in the hope of throwing skeptics off the scent. Humpty-Dumpty came crashing down fairly soon.

Best of all was the praise a particular reviewer might have lavished on a particular "Hatto" recording after having given a lukewarm or downright dismissive review of the actual, original recording. Never was there a more dramatic demonstration of the all-too-human tendency for reviewers to form weird attachments to personal favorites.

But that's all water under the bridge now and presumably wounded pride on the part of the guilty reviewers has had a chance to heal. They were duped, plain and simple, hoist by their own petards. It could have happened to anyone, when you get right down to it. We all have our blind spots.

That said, I do think those reviewers should have been able to hear that the "Hatto" recordings were clearly not all made on the same piano or in the same venue. Maybe I'm imposing unrealistic standards here, but dammit, a Steinway doesn't sound like a Bösendorfer doesn't sound like a Bechstein doesn't sound like a Yamaha doesn't sound like a Fazioli, and a living room doesn't sound like Abbey Road Studio One or All Saint's Church or Leiderkranz Hall or Skywalker Sound. Those reviewers couldn't have been listening all that carefully.

CD reviewers fall into some traps that could be avoided. One of those is their urge to rank things. What a pointless, useless, humorless, and hopeless activity that is. One of the major CD review mags is particularly prone to such silliness. I suppose it's to be expected from people who are constantly trying to say something fresh or interesting about recordings; they can't help themselves.

But no matter how detailed the analysis or philosophical the commentary, a CD review comes down to a simple dualism: me like or me no like. To which my typical reaction is me no give a flying floop. But those staff reviewers can't just copy the jacket art, provide a track listing and performer list, and let it go at that. They have to say something. And if some of them spend far too much time doing that and become alarmingly nearsighted, well OK. I've written a few CD reviews myself and I can see the vortex looming. I still chuckle over the particularly reactive critic who referred to a conductor's taking a ritard in a particular symphony as unforgiveable. All I could think was: shucks, guy. We use words like unforgiveable in the context of killing somebody's child, not in regards to a ritard in a Mozart symphony.

After all, it's just a record. I've got lots of 'em.