I was listening to the CBC (that's the Canadian version of the BBC) radio program "In Tune," which is just a program about happenings in the contemporary classical music world. Anyway, they were talking about someone's new recording of Chopin waltzes and they read off a review, by someone I clearly don't care enough to remember, talking about how this pianist's performance was "mesmerising, as if his soul were laid bare for all to see," or some such nonsense like that, I can't quite recall.

Now, I am not usually in the habit of yelling at my radio, but three quarters of the way through the review I belted out: "Oh, shut the fuc% up!" I mean honestly, does anyone take this drivel seriously anymore? I am so tired of constantly hearing about how classical musicians "transcend the bounds of reality," "speak on a higher plane," "are profound to the point of being in contact with god." It's as if all these reviewers think they are William Hazlitt or something. I just want to tell them right to their faces "Your prose is $hit, so cut it with the hyperbole!"

Anyway, that's my two cents. What do you think?

Yes! Art critics, in general, make me want to gouge my eyeballs out and stuff cotton in my ears. They're either snobbily scathing or embarrassingly over-effusive with the praise.

I'm all about giving praise and compliments where due, but I think it becomes ridiculous beyond a certain point. I believe we called it brown nosing, when I was growing up

I think they're talking about something that's "real," and worth reaching for -- although I must say I've never seen it phrased like how you're saying. But I'm taking it more generally.

Are critics right when they say stuff like that?
The ones I've read, I think mostly yes.

First, let me say that your topic line is hilarious and I appreciated that very much.

I have had the kind of experience that the reviewer purports to be talking about. Twice. But not ninety times.

Hey PPP~~

Shut off the CBC. They're just filling air-time with ear-candy for people who want to be mesmerized, anyway. Eat a lot of peaches. Find Jesus on your own.

+1

polyphasicpianist (Wow, is there a shortcut?). Your post made me laugh. I agree with superfluous nonsense.:) I can picture you and your radio. I suppose everyone has their favorite performers and those they shun. This is not limited to paid music critics. I see an ever increasing importance of blogs and forums such as Piano World. As large and small newspapers forgo funding the music critic's position, there will be more "critics" out there posting. It should be an interesting decade!!

Must have posted about the same time PPP- it is!!

I just found the best website in the world:

http://www.vice.com/read/records-498-v17n8

I guess there is this magazine called "Vice" and in one of their issues they included reviews of classical music recordings. If you haven't seen this already here are two examples - the first is a positive review, the second is a negative review:

SONDRA RADVANOVSKY PERFORMED WITH CONSTANTINE ORBELIAN CONDUCTING THE PHILHARMONIA OF RUSSIA
Verdi Arias
Delos
Maybe you’re a little burned out on Italian opera composers of the 19th century. Hey, who isn’t? Well, put on your dancing shoes my friend, because Sondra Radvanovsky just came to town. This lady doesn’t merely breath new life into the stale arias of yesteryear—she can act figure eights around any A-list Hollywood starlet in the biz. Just listen to her heartbreak, as Aida the Ethiopian Slave, in O patria mia (from act 3 of Aida). If you ever need to whip up some tears for a job interview or jury duty, just pop this bad boy into your iPod.

J.S. BACH PERFORMED BY TIMO KORHONEN
Partitas for Solo Violin
Ondine
OK, sure. It’s nice to see someone administering CPR on the poor partita. And Bach is always good in small doses, like a little wedge of brie on a wheat cracker. But Korhonen? Dude’s an entire bag of cheese. In Partita No. 3, he zips off a rapid-fire preludio with a blast of fancy-finger semiquavers. Sorry, bro—this isn’t the kitchenette at a college dorm party, and we’re not a bunch of teenage girls acting impressed so you’ll sneak us a wine cooler from your roommate’s minifridge. What a cheesebag.

(P.S. this is one of the more tame reviews)

omg yes...the comments on youtube like "he channeled god through his fingers while playing this piece" ... and so on are ridiculous and make me want to vomit.

Listen to Performance Today, which is also about current classical performances, on American Public Radio or on the PT website. The comments from the host, Fred Child, or those subbing for him are generally a whole lot more cogent than that and won't make you want to crush your radio into atoms.

(I'm not sayin' that American radio is better than Canadian, only that PT is a good show!)

Of course, many times pianists do appear to me to transcend reality. There are so many pieces I just can't imagine playing, and can't figure out how anyone can do it in the actual physical world!

Elene

Are you sick of Pianists Transcending reality?

In response to your first question, I've never heard mention of pianists , let alone anyone, transcending reality. If such a feat was possible, and what ever that might mean... what's beyond reality?


I just want to tell them right to their faces "Your prose is $hit, so cut it with the hyperbole!"

Why not go ahead. Or you could take the time and effort to deliver a message of your choosing via email/or other contact info.


What do you think?

Think you just felt like ranting.
Hey we all do that at times.

That kind of talk only bugs me when it feels like it is not true to the speaker's experience. But if that's really what the experience was like for them, why shouldn't they describe it in those terms?

It is what we call 'purple prose' in the fiction writing world. Unnecessary, overdone, aggrandized verse that is exceedingly grating to read.

Being modest and concise in speech is a lost art, it seems (I say this as one who isn't particularly good at either!).

Music teachers are also guilty of this nonsense. When a teacher asks a student to play with more emotion, what exactly is the student to do?

If we're discussing music, use musical terms - slower, faster, louder, softer ... but more emotion? How does that translate? More head movement?

That's not even relatively close to being the same thing that the OP is complaining about.

I don't know, when people start talking about things that cannot be quantified, this kind of inaccurate discussion takes place.

If we're discussing music, then we should use musical terms, not metaphysical or even emotional terms.

Surely beats

"The playing was great."

(where's Mark's HA HA sign?)

... and flailing arms, hands making curlicues in the air ....

But a review is often about how the music touched the reviewer. In that sense, a somewhat different vocabulary can be relevant to the reader.

In the end, however, I too find purple prose annoying. But I have to admit that the "dude" kind of review is every bit as annoying.

Her stunning performance of Chopin's etudes transcended reality, not the gritty reality of a worker in an Indonesian shoe factory where the nauseating smell of freshly extruded plastic singes the nasal passages but the slightly uncomfortable reality of a Palm Beach matron whose stock portfolio has lost twenty five percent of its value.

Bulwer-Lytton type music review anyone?

Why do critics get paid for evaluating things that they usually know nothing about?

It's because they write from the depths of their very soul.

Pretending that the emotional/metaphysical/numinous/whatever is not there, is just as silly and just as wrongheaded (and just as big a teaching mistake) as invoking it incessantly without good reason.

david a, have you ever told a student to play with more emotion?

If you did, what did you expect the student to change musically?

Thanks that says it exactly.

+1

LOL! Well done! I don't know what kind of emoticon to put here, this is so excellent! ? ? ?

Do they have a transcendental emoticon?

:transcendental:

Hmm. Guess not, but I will use that anyway.

When critics have nothing substantive to say, they resort to abstraction to make themselves sound better!

Taking a clue from Peter Schickele, how about combining these two:



and