Can a critic be objective after being paid to write a programme note?
NewsThe question is posed by Hugh Kerr, editor of Edinburgh Music Review, when assessing print reactions to Haydn’s Creation:
A good Creation but not a great Creation!
That was my feeling after Thursday’s SCO concert at the Usher Hall. On the face of it there were all the ingredients for a great Creation, an expanded SCO of almost 50 musicians for the second week in a row, plus the SCO chorus and three good looking (but notably not Scottish) principal singers. We do have a number of fine young singers in Scotland and it would be good to see Scottish orchestras using them more. Yet, although I enjoyed the concert, had we still been giving stars it would have been a four star concert not a five star rating as some of my fellow critics gave it. These included David Kettle of ‘The Scotsman’, who wrote a very good set of programme notes for the performance.
That raises an interesting ethical issue for critics: are you conflicted by reviewing a concert where you have been paid by the orchestra for writing the programme notes? As a former member of the NUJ’s Ethics Committee these are the kind of issues we discussed there. Whilst excoriating motoring journalists who were given expenses paid holidays, including wine, women and song in luxury hotels, and were expected to write good reviews of the latest model, the Ethics Committee were understandably more reluctant to be critical of cultural journalists who were given all expenses paid trips to view a new work for the Edinburgh Festival or accompany one of Scotland’s orchestras on their overseas trips. Could they then give an unbiased critique of the work? Now I must emphasise that David Kettle is a very good critic and very much entitled to his fee for the programme notes. I also agree with most of his review of the SCO concert in ‘The Scotsman’, although I wouldn’t have given it five stars. I should declare an interest that I get free tickets for concerts and an occasional drink at the intervals. I don’t get paid by the ‘Edinburgh Music Review’; indeed it costs me and my Co-Editor Christine Twine several hundred pounds a year to publish the online review. I think this gives editorial and critical freedom to our reviews; indeed I have savaged operas in Vienna, Copenhagen and Covent Garden, despite getting free tickets (though no other expenses) for the opera there.
Slippedisc’s view: Of course it’s possible. If the critic has integrity, s/he will not be swayed by the commercial relationship with the orchstra or organiser. Those who are swayed tend to be quickly discovered.
The question should be ended after “objective”-
I agree with Slippedisc’s view. As a critic who frequently writes programme notes for venues (Wigmore Hall, etc.) that I have reviewed concerts at. The only way forward is for critics to have a moral compass and be honest. I have reviewed concerts with both positive, negative and lukewarm copy. On one occasion, I was banned by one promoter when my review was objected to, despite having written positive reviews previously.
The answer, surely, is that, yes, it’s possible for a critic to remain objective. However, there is an obvious conflict of interest, so how on earth can we know whether a positive review is objective in these circumstances?
This is precisely the problem – you can’t. Then again, the whole magazine business (including classical music) tends to involve reviewing (or at the very least purporting to objectively write about) things that are being marketed through paid advertisements in the same magazine. Everyone of us has had a really bad vacationing experience in a hellhole to which we vow never to return, but all destinations in a travel magazine is an absolute “must” to visit.
There are so few ways in this world to make a living writing about classical music that the notion that to choose the one should dictate turning away the other seems very purist and idealistic given that — let’s face it — the stakes are pretty low. I mean, a biased motoring journalist might actually induce someone to spend many tens of thousands of dollars on an unworthy vehicle. A biased classical music journalist’s review might induce someone to — well what, exactly? The concert has already taken place. That money has been spent regardless. Moreover the reader who is also the concert goer has seen the same name on the program notes as well as the published review so they can form their own judgment as to what if any effect on sincerity and trustworthiness that has (plus of course they heard the concert with their own ears and really just want reviews that they agree with, positive or negative).
I even suppose a case can be made that writing an informed program note about a work might make that writer the best possible choice to opine on the qualities of a given performance.
As a one-time record reviewer, I was never asked to write “liner notes” by a record company, although several of my more seasoned colleagues were. I suppose if I had been asked, and very much wanted to be asked again because I needed the money (which fortunately I did not), I can see how that could at least cause a record reviewer to hedge some bets in terms of strength of language, even if not in ultimate opinion or judgment.
Of course, as a reviewer I got “free CDs” back when that was a pretty big deal, but that excitement wore off pretty quickly by the time the second or third cardboard box arrived stuffed with discs to be reviewed, always way too close to the deadline, and almost always with yet another Bruch Violin Concerto to be tossed onto the existing pile of Bruch Concertos.
If it is a conflict of interest (and I am not convinced it is, assuming both program notes and reviews are signed), it is a very minor league conflict. An example of a major league classical music conflict of interest? Well, what of the situation Virgil Thomson was in during his newspaper music critic days in New York? But even then the conflict was out there for all to see and all to talk about. There the conflict was less what he wrote about musicians who performed, or refused to perform, his music, but rather what calculations those musicians had to think about when making repertoire decisions. They and their management obviously wanted positive reviews. A very different conflict of interest, with higher stakes it seems to me.
David, do you think Fanfare should have permitted the late Bernard Jacobson to regularly review Philadelphia Orchestra recordings while still in their employ? I distinctly recall that his reviews of Riccardo Muti’s Beethoven and Brahms cycles were unusually complimentary at a time when virtually every other knowledgeable critic’s opinion was mixed at best. Similarly, the critic and program annotator Alfred Frankenstein caused a major flap when he interceded on behalf of MD Enrique Jorda after George Szell decided to claim an illness rather conduct a 2nd week of concerts with the SFSO. Then again I think Michael Steinberg is generally credited with handling both duties at the BSO and Boston Globe with complete professionalism.
Well that’s a fair question to ask, Amos, and my response will be to waffle! I see the point. But if Bernard Jacobson’s opinions were influenced, was it by his employment? Or was it by his personal relationship with Muti? There are some reviewers/ critics who seem to know or have known just about everyone, so are they to review no one?
Roger Dettmer of Fanfare was (perhaps I should say “is” as I do
not know if he is still with us) one such. He knew Reiner, Ormandy, Starker, Solti, Ozawa, and the list goes on. While I did not sense a resulting bias in his reviews of their recordings, I think I can state with some confidence that Fanfare readers were probably better off, from a literature standpoint if no other, if Roger was the reviewer.
He never equivocated, even one bit.
I write that as someone who did not always agree with his views, but did my share of equivocating!
David thank you for the thoughtful reply. In the case of Mr. Jacobson my understanding is that his employment by the PO and his relationship with Muti were one and the same. In the case of Mortimer Frank his association with the Toscanini family was above board and readers were never misled.
Critics (or the publication commissioning them) should pay their own way, including for the tickets themselves. Promoters should unite and stop issuing free tickets in this context.
It might be a bit tricky from the moral point of view to write the notes and then the review but objectively there seems to be little problem. Programme notes should explain the music, not the performance while, on the whole, a review is about the performance and not explaining the music. There will always be exceptions of course. I write prog notes and also do reviews but never for the same concert and as it’s only ever for amateur performances I always have to be careful in a review not to discourage the amateurs too much – they won’t ask me again if I cause upset!!
If the critic has integrity, what he should do is not write the concert review. Or not agree to write the notes.
No offence, but does anyone really listen to critics? I mean in the real world?
I can’t imagine reviewing such a concert truly objectively. What is much more concerning, however, is publications that require performers to PAY in order to be reviewed. And then, there are certain critics who use their position to advance their political agenda, no matter how destructive it may be.