Pianist asks Google to take down negative review

The Croatian pianist Dejan Lazic has asked Google to take down a 2010 Anne Midgette review in the Washington Post, claiming it has harmed its reputation by popping up first on all searches. Lazic, who is based in Europe, is applying to Google under the EU’s ‘right to be forgotten’ directive.

The review, as it happens, is neither vicious or unadmiring. Anne plainly states: ‘It’s not that Lazic isn’t sensitive – or profoundly gifted. The very first notes of Chopin’s Andante Spianato and Grande Polonaise Brillante at the start of the program signalled that he can do anything he wants at the keyboard, detailing chords with a jeweler’s precision, then laying little curls of notes atop a cushion of sound like diamonds nestled on velvet. Again and again, throughout the afternoon, he showed what a range of colors he could get out of the instrument, switching from hard-edged percussiveness to creamy legato, crackling chords to a single thread of sound. The sheer technical ability was, at first, a delight.’

Until the magic wore off.

Mr Lazic may, by this application, have earned the right to be forgotten until he grows a thicker skin and receives better advice.