Steve writes: >Norman Lebrecht raised the issue of "trusting" critics as a kind of >Consumer Reports for recordings and performances and asked which ones are >trusted most and least. > >I've almost never looked at a single critic for that reason, so the issue >of trust doesn't come up at all for me. I read critics for other reasons >- insight into the music or performer, the pleasures of good argumentation, >interest in criticism as a genre. As far as getting me to plunk down my >money, either a critic convinces me to take a chance or not or a consensus >does, but it's never the same critic or the same consensus. I never read a >single critic because he's right or wrong, but because he's interesting. I agree completely with Steve. And I would add that music criticism is useful to me not when it is about what is "correct" or "incorrect," "right" or "wrong," or "good" or "bad" in a performance, but when it tells me about what is new or different in an interpretation, and perhaps about how an interpretation provides a new way of hearing a piece. John Grant http://artists.mp3s.com/artists/42/john_lewis_grant.html