Nick Perovich wrote: >I tend to discount British reviews of British artists, as I, rightly or >wrongly, suspect that they are inflated. We could say that we discount American reviews of American artists for the same reason. But we don't because I'm sure that they are not. So why DO you think we British especially are incapable of being objective about our own artists? The implication is that 1) We don't have any artists to be proud of, and 2) We are so hoplessly chauvanistic that we are incapable of believing they can do any wrong. Neither is true. I speak as someone who heard Rattle's Mahler Fifth and loathed it. >And since I have not encountered many reviews of Rattle's conducting >outside of British publications, I really don't know what to think. I have a couple of American critics' reviews of Rattle performances which are pretty laudatory if you would like me to forward them. I have also seen other nationalities review Rattle performances and been even more laudatory than the British (or the Americans). >But some of Barenboim's work-- I am thinking of his Bruckner, Brahms, and >Beethoven 7th--has received very favorable (but admittedly not uniformly >favorable) attention. So I ask, is Rattle's superiority to Barenboim >really without question? Having got the first two parts of my reply off my British chest, here I can agree with you. I too was surprised by Canning's claim. I think they are two different personalities with differing ideas about music. We are the benefciaries of that and to say one is "superior" to the other in any field is more a case of mistaking an opinion for a fact rather than an example of national bias. Tony Duggan, England. My (developing) Mahler recordings survey is at: http://www.musicweb.force9.co.uk/music/Mahler/index.html