.. for couple weeks now. Writing here seems to be the most appropriate thing to do. I won’t mention names nor places on purpose. So here is my story. Couple weeks ago; I was touring and playing many concerts, I received many reviews and all of them were extremely flattering; I’m thankful for that. But something happened and has been disturbing me deeply ever since. First, I would like to express my feelings & thoughts about critics. What a tough job. I don’t envy them, so many qualities are required to be a good reviewer. As far as I understand, the very difficult task of a critic is to understand the music, to have the historical and musical background needed to talk about the pieces; to understand the artist’s choices, positions and statements; to analyse all of that and their relationships, and to refer and compare his conclusions with what the established (does it exist?) “standards of taste” are. Wao.. that being said, here is what happened. In one of the very enthusiastic review I got, the conductor I played with was -destroyed- by the journalist, in a very nasty and arrogant way. Is this ever necessary to be disrespectful towards an artist, that first, has enough courage to be on stage and offer his/her entire vulnerability, second, put hours of work, thoughts and commitment into the music..?
And even more disturbing was when the readers of the article learned that the composer himself would have loved my playing.. hhmm, I mean, thank you very much but who is this person who knows what the composer would have loved, or not? I wish I could find more moderate words, but this is absolutely ridiculous. And the apotheosis was when the journalist talked about the ending of the first mouvement cadenza (he was very specific and gave enough details) and stated it was the third movement’s one. So, who knows the piece here ?
I’m sorry, but this is not okay. Being treated like that by someone who might not be able to play a scale on any instrument, nor ever experienced what it feels to be on stage should not be tolerated.
I used to say I don’t give much credit to reviews (good and bad ones), and will absolutely continue to do so.
“Integrity has no need of rules”
Albert Camus