Steven Schwartz wrote:

>This ill-will comes from his rather unremarkable tenure with the NY
>Phil, after a smashing success with Los Angeles.  I find him a very fine
>opera conductor.  He's also made superior recordings of Schmidt, Bruckner,
>Tchaikovsky, and Strauss, done early in his career.  Other than that, I
>think he generally coasts and has for at least twenty years [snip] . . .

I think Stephen's evaluation of Mehta is intelligent, and I don't have any
problem with it.  Except for certain opera recordings, Mehta's performances
rarely impress me.  So, despite my following comments, I don't disagree
with Stephen on the level of a substantive evaluation of Mehta's
conducting.

But I would like to discuss Giulio's observation about "Mehta bashing" and
"big name" bashing.  I think Giulio has correctly identified a pervasive
critical reaction to "big name" conductors and other musicians.  Let me
suggest one significant (but not exclusive) explanation for the bashing,
and that is that almost anyone who achieves a certain high level of
popularity will eventually suffer a critical backlash in classical music.
Although this critical reaction is certainly not unique to classical music,
I think those who seriously listen to classical music generally make a very
strong inference when someone or something is extremely popular, and that
inference is that the someone or something must be inferior.  That
inference will be the strongest where, as with Mehta, the musician becomes
associated with popular culture.

It would be an absolutely fascinating book or thesis project to examine
music criticism from the perspective of figuring out whether critical
reactions pervasively evolve toward the negative where the musician becomes
associated with popularity, great power, and especially "popular" culture.
If I am correct that there is such a pervasive evolution (and I definitely
believe there is), then it would be predictable that the critics would
explain the changes in critical reaction with an observation something
like this, "well, conductor Mr. Popular earlier in his career was capable
of great achievements and had great talent, but in recent decades he has
gotten lazy and has simply enjoyed his wealth and fame." That analysis will
have several variations, but they all relate to explaining a departure from
broadly positive critical reactions to broadly negative critical reactions.
Now, if you examine critical reactions to virtually any classical music
musician who achieved a great level of popularity and power, you will be
able to identify, first, the broad shift toward negative reactions, and
second, the "he had great talent but he blew it" explanation for the change
in critical reactions.

Of course, there are musicians where quality of work product deteriorates
with time, but my point is that the critical "evolution" or "reaction" that
I describe above is, I believe, much more broadly and predictably applied.

Once people develop negative reactions to, let's say a conductor, then
those negative reactions infuse their expectations so that it is hardly
surprising that critics then honestly don't like the conductor's product.
Expectations are clearly a huge part of a very subjective process of
critically reacting to a musician's work product, and we know from research
on placebos that, for example, the expectation of getting better leads
people to report that they are feeling better, even though they were only
given a placebo.  It would be very interesting to subject listeners to
double blind experiments where performances of particular conductors are
played, and neither the listener nor the person conducting the test knows
the identity of the conductor.

I think that the "popular is bad" inference also provides a limited
explanation for the "if he's dead he must be a better conductor" attitude
(I'm obviously stating the position somewhat facetiously).  Long dead
conductors are, psychologically (for the listener), substantially or
completely removed from popular culture, and they can't be tainted with
what I contend is a pervasively negative inference about "modern" or
"popular" culture.  In fact, those who prefer dead musicians consistently
explain the "fact" that the "older" musicians are better that the "current
crop" by detailing the horrible declines in modern life and culture and
society, with particular emphasis on modern "commercialism"
("commercialism" is extremely tied to concepts of popularity) and "star"
mentality.  If I am correct that something other than pure, substantive
critical analysis explains the "dead musician" preference, then I would
expect that this preference is not limited to our day and age, and that it
has been around for centuries.  Well, if you look at music criticism as far
back as Bach, you see almost precisely the same attitudes being expressed
in favor of the "old masters" and against the "modern" or "current"
performers.

I want to again stress that I am not trying to argue that musicians
never deteriorate, and that "success" never "spoils" anybody.  I believe
there are such circumstances.  I also am not limiting my argument to
"professional critics." The tendencies I discuss above are certainly not
limited to people who are critics for a living.

Drew Capuder
Fairmont, West Virginia USA