Hector Aguilar writes:

>I was listening to NPR yesterday, and they had a feature which was
>basically about how poorly Broadway shows are doing this year.  What
>caught my ear was that supposedly not only are there shows that might
>close after only one or two nights (understandably), but in some cases
>there are shows which don't even make it to opening night.  Apparently
>there are pre-performance performances which are reviewed by critics--
>critics who are apparently trusted and have the producers' ears-- and
>if the critics aren't at least kind then the show doesn't even bother
>opening.

Because Broadway is above all a business, rather than an art.  Rather
than actually risk the reaction of the public, and thus more money, they
ask essentially a focus group what they should do.  The focus group, I
should point out, gives them as much useful information as the entrails
of animals used to give the Roman vates.

>What I was wondering is, why doesn't the the CM recording
>industry have a model like this?

I wonder, should it?

>Or does it?  I get the impression that there are a fair number of
>professional or respected critics on this list.  Are they ever approached
>_before_ a CD is released, to get their opinions about an ongoing project?

I've only been asked whom I'd like to see recorded.  My suggestions have
been, quite rightly, ignored.  I know very little about business, although
I do suspect that most recordings of well-known, often-recorded repertoire
will sink without a trace unless the performers are currently hot.  I
also think it bad business for a record company to compete with itself
- in other words, three different new recordings of the Tchaikovsky
violin concerto.  I never could understand why Decca planned a second
complete Ring (never finished) when they still had one that was still
selling very well.  I happened to love the recordings they did finish
even more than the Solti, but I was still puzzled.

In the old days, with producer legends like Legge, Bishop, Grubb, and
Culshaw, it was essentially a producer's taste and passion in arguing
*for* a project that determined what got recorded.  Yet even someone as
consistently successful in the market as Walter Legge couldn't get through
his project to record the complete songs of Hugo Wolf at EMI (he produced
them for the Hugo Wolf Society, of which he was the founding member).
These fellows knew quite a bit about classical music, probably more than
the current crop of critics, AND they had taste, besides.

>If not, then is this an impractical or bad idea, and if so, why?

Because you're assuming that the judgment of critics means more than it
does and that it lowers the risk of financial failure.  I don't understand
why this would be true.

Steve Schwartz