Kevin Sutton scripsit:

>I have no qualms whatsoever about taking gratuitous slams at Norman
>Lebrecht.  He has published word upon endless word of "slam" against
>nearly every major figure in the musical world. His tomes are little better
>than gossip columns, he is an insufferable nay-sayer, and his penchant for
>carlessness in his fact-checking has been exposed time and again in the
>review columns of fine musical journals. His dirt-dishing  in "The Maestro
>Myth" is abominable, yea, despicable for many reasons, not the least of
>which is that he chose to unleash tirades on dozens of men long dead ...

Time to step in and defend someone perfectly capable of defending himself.
The music industry is a corrupt and sordid business, and NL is the only
person who has had the guts to stand up and say so. OK, so he sometimes
gets the odd fact wrong, but he's wrong in the right direction. He is, I
admit, a journalist, not a musicologist, and my scholarly instincts some
times regret that he goes straight from A to C without respecting the
niceties of B. But ask anyone honest in the trade and they'll confirm that
NL has it pretty well accurate.

Kevin wrote in an earlier posting that NL centres everything on the sexual
escapades of his subjects. A) that's not true: Kevin is dishing his own
exaggerated dirt here; B) when a prominent personality uses his clout as
a musician to obtain sexual gratification (from young boys in the instance
NL leads with the "The Maestro Myth" and we all know whom he means),
said musician deserves all the bad publicity he gets -- there are some
self-serving bastards out there, and just because they can waggle a stick
or hit a piano doesn't entitle them to be judged by a moral code looser
than that which serves the rest of us.

Kevin is thus wrong to categorise NL as a "nay-sayer"; nor does he
attack the art form but the people who exploit it for their personal
aggrandisement. "When the Music Stops" examines (inter alia) the
disgraceful use of taxpayers' money to line the pockets of musicians whose
pockets are already bulging. That kind of "nay" needs saying very loudly.
Those of us with some experience of the inside of the music industry know
the kinds of abuse that go on there, and we could do with all the Norman
Lebrechts we can get.

Martin Anderson
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www.classical.net/music/books/toccata/index.html