I’m back in town. Apologies for the long gap, but I’ve been globe-trotting – Doha, Shanghai, Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, Dead Sea – in search of enlightenment and encouragement in these gloomy times.

No sooner am I back than the BBC’s Today programme asks me to defend my recent demolition of Imagine This!, the new Warsaw Ghetto musical, against its outraged producer, one Beth Trachtenberg.

Never averse to an early-morning exchange of sweet reason, I found it difficult to edge a word in between Ms T’s storm of self-justification and free ticket offers. You can hear it here if you have five minutes and nothing better to do.

Apparently some of the show’s backers are the children of Holocaust survivors. This does not in the slightest change my view that using genocide as a backdrop for trivial entertainment is ethically a very dubious thing to do.

I’m back in town. Apologies for the long gap, but I’ve been globe-trotting – Doha, Shanghai, Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, Dead Sea – in search of enlightenment and encouragement in these gloomy times.

No sooner am I back than the BBC’s Today programme asks me to defend my recent demolition of Imagine This!, the new Warsaw Ghetto musical, against its outraged producer, one Beth Trachtenberg.

Never averse to an early-morning exchange of sweet reason, I found it difficult to edge a word in between Ms T’s storm of self-justification and free ticket offers. You can hear it here if you have five minutes and nothing better to do.

Apparently some of the show’s backers are the children of Holocaust survivors. This does not in the slightest change my view that using genocide as a backdrop for trivial entertainment is ethically a very dubious thing to do.

Here’s the text of yesterday’s Free thought on Radio 3.
 
Norman Lebrecht: In Defence of Criticism
 
 

One morning before too long, you will wake up and find last night’s opera premiere reviewed in your paper by Covent Garden’s chief executive and the new play at the National by a drizzle of audience comments.

 

The role of arts critic is being eroded and, unless we do something about it, discussion of the arts will soon be monopolised by promoters – as it is already on TV talent shows – and by the unaccountable whimsy of bloggers.

 

American newspapers are shedding critics as the first line of economy. In Britain review space has shrunk and some forms – television criticism, for instance – are being abolished.

 

Is that such a bad thing? I hear you ask. What are critics, anyway, except a bunch of curmudgeons who are paid to pour scorn over our favourite stars? Why do they so rarely have a nice word to say for new musicals?

 

Why, indeed. To answer that, you have to go back three hundred years to Swift and Addison who invented the profession of criticism – perhaps even further to Aristotle, who laid down the rules of aesthetics and the tradition of debate. What critics have done ever since is to apply expert analytical skills and years of experience to all they see and hear.

 

Most critics I know are inveterate optimists who go out night after night in the fond expectation of finding genius. Their disappointment is recorded more in sorrow than in rage, and their comments form an essential part of creative self-correction. Without critics, the arts go into reverse and democracy gives way to mob rule.

 

It is a thankless task, criticism. Artists hate being told where they went wrong and editors don’t like to offend billionaire advertisers. It’s a thankless job, but unless we cherish it, we stand to lose one of our oldest freedoms. So read the reviews this morning and enjoy the range of comment on the page. It may not be there forever.

 

And here’s the URL for the ensuing Night Waves discussion with Andrew Dickson of Guardian online and Susannah Clapp of the Observer. http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00dwgnk

 

 

 

Here’s the text of yesterday’s Free thought on Radio 3.
 
Norman Lebrecht: In Defence of Criticism
 
 

One morning before too long, you will wake up and find last night’s opera premiere reviewed in your paper by Covent Garden’s chief executive and the new play at the National by a drizzle of audience comments.

 

The role of arts critic is being eroded and, unless we do something about it, discussion of the arts will soon be monopolised by promoters – as it is already on TV talent shows – and by the unaccountable whimsy of bloggers.

 

American newspapers are shedding critics as the first line of economy. In Britain review space has shrunk and some forms – television criticism, for instance – are being abolished.

 

Is that such a bad thing? I hear you ask. What are critics, anyway, except a bunch of curmudgeons who are paid to pour scorn over our favourite stars? Why do they so rarely have a nice word to say for new musicals?

 

Why, indeed. To answer that, you have to go back three hundred years to Swift and Addison who invented the profession of criticism – perhaps even further to Aristotle, who laid down the rules of aesthetics and the tradition of debate. What critics have done ever since is to apply expert analytical skills and years of experience to all they see and hear.

 

Most critics I know are inveterate optimists who go out night after night in the fond expectation of finding genius. Their disappointment is recorded more in sorrow than in rage, and their comments form an essential part of creative self-correction. Without critics, the arts go into reverse and democracy gives way to mob rule.

 

It is a thankless task, criticism. Artists hate being told where they went wrong and editors don’t like to offend billionaire advertisers. It’s a thankless job, but unless we cherish it, we stand to lose one of our oldest freedoms. So read the reviews this morning and enjoy the range of comment on the page. It may not be there forever.

 

And here’s the URL for the ensuing Night Waves discussion with Andrew Dickson of Guardian online and Susannah Clapp of the Observer. http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00dwgnk

 

 

 

All those who have been reading ‘In a Critical Condtion’ on this blog will be encouraged to know that the crisis in criticism theme has been picked up by BBC Radio 3.

This morning I gave the Free Thought talk on the subject – streamed here from tomorrow – and tonight I will be defending it on Night Waves against the Guardian’s editor of online reviews.

Professional criticism is a pre-requisite of democracy. Free online reviews are weightless.

Discuss.

 

All those who have been reading ‘In a Critical Condtion’ on this blog will be encouraged to know that the crisis in criticism theme has been picked up by BBC Radio 3.

This morning I gave the Free Thought talk on the subject – streamed here from tomorrow – and tonight I will be defending it on Night Waves against the Guardian’s editor of online reviews.

Professional criticism is a pre-requisite of democracy. Free online reviews are weightless.

Discuss.

 

My big hero of the financial crash is Marcel Reich-Ranicki who, given an achievement award on German’s second TV channel, ZDF, thrust it back at the presenter and denounced the whole of public television as ‘rubbish’.

Reich-Ranicki, 88, is Germany’s foremost literary critic and, as a result of his hour-long weekly discussion programme on the screen, a national figure. No respecter of reputations, he has fallen out with every leading author from Gunter Grass down when their books fell below his exalted standards. Now he has publicly bitten the hand that fed him – and the result is an attack of rabies panic among German media bosses.

In an effort to mitigate the shock of rejection, the awards show host Thomas Gottschalk offered to stage a televised debate between Reich-Ranicki and the heads of public television – an offer accepted with alacrity by the executives and, after appropriate reflection, by the critic himself. That is going to be one fun show.

The focus of Reich-Ranicki’s attack was on the dumbing down of public broadcasting, the reliance on reality shows, talent contests and talentless celebrities. Gottschalk admitted in a subsequent interview that if television were made to the critic’s rules, he would be unemployed.

Beyond the confines of a German spat, however, this has lessons for all of us who ply a trade in the creative arts. All my writing life, I have accepted persuasion from publishers and career makers to go on TV whenever asked, and on the BBC without a second thought. Now, I hardly ever accept without strict guarantees.

Television has become a dishonest medium, distorting facts to fit the visual image and contorting ideas into cliche. Information programmes, so called, are voyeuristic garbage and even sport has been subsumed by the cult of celebrity.

The time has come for all creative people to join the Reich-Ranicki rally and denounce public television for the rubbish it is – until the dustcarts come along and the act is cleaned up.

Let’s all say No to TV.

Sign below to join the rally.  

The guest on BBC Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs this morning was David McVicar. He was introduced by Kirsty Young with a text that read something like ‘at 42, he has long been regarded as the leading British opera director of his generation … he is so busy around the world that his diary is filled up to 2013.’

I can’t give you the exact words of the introduction since the programme is one of the very few that is not available on the BBc i-player, for reasons of ‘rights ownership.’

However, I refuse to believe that a journalist of Kirsty Young’s experience would recycle blether like this from a semi-literate press release and put it at the top of her show. Presumably some assistant producer or intern was assigned to the script.

The vacancy of that opening statement just takes the breath away. If McVicar was not a leader in his generation, what the hell was was he doing on a fame show like Desert Island Discs? For heaven’s sake, tell the listeners something they don’t know. And if his diary was not full until 2013 in a milieu where engagements are made 4-7 years in advance, he would be effectively unemployed and unworthy of appearing on the island. A glaring oxymoron and another waste of breath.

Does no-one at Radio 4 read the scripts before they go out on air? This sounds like amateur radio, and it’s supposed to be a BBC flagship programme.

Sharp-eyed readers of the arts pages will have spotted that the Daily Telegraph has succumbed to the temptation of appending stars to its arts reviews. It is the last of the upmarket British dailies to fall in line with this simplistic trend.

One of my first acts in March 2002 as Assistant Editor of the Evening Standard was to abolish review stars, except on recorded products that could be quantifiably measured by repeated sampling.

The argument I put to my editor and colleagues was that if we were employing the best and most readable team of critics in the business, it made no sense to encourage the reader to skip from headline to star line, omitting the subtlties of our review. My argument held sway so long as I wielded executive authority at the paper.

Of all the devices that devalue the function of criticism, the bar of stars is among the most pernicious. It suggests that artistic creation can be ticked off like a school essay and subjected to a set of SATs, in which the individual, expert guidance of teachers and examiners is set aside for the one-rule-fits-all solution of 21st century politicians.

I understand full well the busy lives that most readers lead and their need at a weekends to make a quick judgement on which show to see without having to wade through all the guff that comes with a multi-section paper.

Nevertheless, as critics we have the duty to protect art from snap judgements. Judgements of this kind allow art to be easily branded as ‘degenerate’ or ‘anti-people’ or ‘anti-art’ – and you know where those labels come from.

I am sorry to see the Telegraph fall prey to the dumbed-down times and I hope serious papers elsewhere will continue to resist. It is not just critics that are diminished by these shortcuts – it is journalism itself.

Or am I wrong? Your views, please.

 

 

 

Make of this what you will:

 

Concertzender victim of its own success

Hello Norman,

A bizarre situation has developed in the Netherlands. Everywhere in the world, classical broadcasters are shutting down, because of dropping listening figures.

In the Netherlands however, the Concertzender, who you might
know because of its internet channels, has to shut down
because it has become too popular…

 
Dutch Public radio hosts the Concertzender, and working with 150
volunteers and a handful of paid staff members, they operate on a basis of 500.000 euro a year. Cable companies in the Netherlands are now opting to broadcast the concertzender, instead of the non-classical Radio 6. Instead of looking for a good solution, the co-ordinator of radio 6 just wants to pull the plug from the Concertzender…  

To make things even weirder, a message explaining the situation with a call for support had to be removed from the homepage. A small flood of support letters came in, prompting the board of management of the Dutch public radio to postpone their decision. Because the Concertzender has also a large
international following, could you please write a mail to:

mening@concertzender.nl

http://www.concertzender.eu/?language=en

I hope I can count on your support!!

Greetings,
Rolf den Otter

An afternoon with Zeffirelli in the garden of his Roman villa, a stone’s throw from the Cinecitta studios, brought back memories of a bygone age when directors flitted easily from opera to film and back.

Franco was brought into the business by his lover Luchino Visconti but soon cut a dash in his own right. He talks to me uninhibitedly about growing up a bastard, fighting with the partisans, seeing Mussolini hung in the piazza and making his mark on showbiz with Maria Callas, Jesus of Nazareth, Silvio Berlusconi and a cast of thousands.

Hear him on The Lebrecht Interview on BBC Radio 3 next Monday, and streamed all week on-line, here:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio3/lebrechtinterview/

 

If you’re quick about, you can still catch last week’s rare and unbuttoned chat with Christoph von Dohnanyi.

An afternoon with Zeffirelli in the garden of his Roman villa, a stone’s throw from the Cinecitta studios, brought back memories of a bygone age when directors flitted easily from opera to film and back.

Franco was brought into the business by his lover Luchino Visconti but soon cut a dash in his own right. He talks to me uninhibitedly about growing up a bastard, fighting with the partisans, seeing Mussolini hung in the piazza and making his mark on showbiz with Maria Callas, Jesus of Nazareth, Silvio Berlusconi and a cast of thousands.

Hear him on The Lebrecht Interview on BBC Radio 3 next Monday, and streamed all week on-line, here:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio3/lebrechtinterview/

 

If you’re quick about, you can still catch last week’s rare and unbuttoned chat with Christoph von Dohnanyi.