classical music bloggers

Yesterday on BBC Radio 3’s Music Matters programme host Tom Service and a panel of invited guests, including the acclaimed concert pianist Peter Donohoe, discussed the future of music criticism. I listened with particular interest, since I have, through my blogging, joined the ranks of “music critic” (though I would never describe myself as a “music journalist”). The discussion was interesting and wide-ranging and some pertinent observations were made regarding the relationship between critics/reviewers and artists (as Peter Donohoe said “we should all be on the same side, that of the music”), the importance of music journalism in supporting and promoting (in a non-commercial sense) classical music, and the effect of the blogosphere and online review sites on music journalism. This last point was of particular interest to me, especially in the light of a rather unfair article by the Telegraph’s Arts Editor in Chief, Sarah Crompton, in which she describes people like me as “citizen critics” and suggests that we have no place in the ranks of “qualified” journalists. I was also rather put out by comments from members of the Music Matters panel who suggested that because bloggers are (generally) not paid, they must be on some kind of agenda or in the pay of someone else. This has moved me, along with several other blogging colleagues and fellow online reviewers, to offer an explanation as to why we blog.

I started this blog in 2010, initially as a means of writing down my personal thoughts on playing the piano, repertoire, concerts I have enjoyed, and various other music- or piano-related topics. In 2011 I was invited to join the team of reviewers for Bachtrack.com, an international concert and opera listings site. The people who write for Bachtrack are, in general, not professional journalists, merely people who care passionately about live classical music and who are able to convey that passion in engaging and intelligent reviews. At the beginning of this year, I was also invited to write for CultureVulture.net, a US-based arts and culture website which offers intelligent, quality arts journalism and covers a wide remit, from exhibitions and music to tv and DVD reviews. I have also recently set up a sister blog to this one, MusArtLondon, as a home for all my reviews, and those of my CultureVulture London colleagues, Nick Marlowe and ‘Erato’. (Find more here….).

I am not a “professional” writer any more than I am a “professional” pianist, for I receive no payment for my writing nor my piano playing. However, I do not believe that my lack of “professional” credentials makes my ability to express my views in writing any less valid than those of a trained journalist writing for one of the broadsheet newspapers or music magazines such as Gramophone. Indeed, a number of broadsheet music journalists are not musicians nor have any kind of musical background other than a declared “interest” in the subject; and yet some of these people can be seen as the ultimate arbiters of taste and quality. It must be said at this point that there are also a number of music journalists who have had a full musical training and are active as composers and musicians themselves.

In her article, Sarah Crompton states that “a critic is someone who devotes their time to the pursuit of cultural judgement”, and suggests that a journalistic training better equips her and her colleagues on other newspapers and journals for this task than my passion and enthusiasm for the subject (and maybe the fact that I am both a classically-trained pianist and someone who has enjoyed a lifetime of attending concerts). She also suggests that people like me don’t do our homework, that we simply rock up to a concert and toss off a few unconsidered paragraphs after the event. Not true: ahead of a concert I spend time researching the music and performer I am going to hear. One of the best classical music blogs which I read regularly is Boulezian, which is both well-informed and erudite. Its author is a professor at Royal Holloway, and an avid concert and opera goer. My particular grouch with Sarah Crompton’s point of view is the inference that because she writes for a broadsheet newspaper and is a “professional journalist”, her opinions and judgement are somehow “better” or more valid than mine.

I suspect that much of her anxiety is founded on the uncomfortable knowledge that the blogosphere is partly responsible for the slow death of traditional print journalism. I don’t applaud this: in fact, it saddens me. I used to work in old-fashioned book publishing and the thought of a world without books, journals and other printed matter appalls me. But the rise of the blogger and online reviewer/critic has, in my humble opinion, opened up the world of opinion-making and debate, and has created a vast and wonderful forum for the exchange of ideas. Criticism and reviewing has become more democratic and some fantastic blogs have emerged as a result, offering extremely intelligent and high-quality writing (see my personal picks below).

As a keen concert-goer and regular reviewer, I have never set myself up as the arbiter of taste and quality. I write about classical music because I care passionately about it, and I love live music. I am always happy to enter into a debate with people about the merits, or otherwise, of a particular concert or performer. I want this blog to be a place for discussion, and I am always happy to respond to comments. It cheers me enormously when people write to tell me how much they have enjoyed one of my reviews: indeed, the best compliments are comments such as “you brought the music to life in your writing” or “you made me feel I was right there with you at the concert”.

The debate about music critics and music criticism is nothing new, and is one that is likely to run and run, never more so now in our social media obsessed world, where everyone can, in effect, be a critic by simply “liking” a post on Facebook, Google+ or Instagram, or retweeting a link on Twitter. Traditional print journalists need to accept that the blogosphere is part of 21st century life and makes an important and valid contribution to our rich and varied cultural landscape.

Fellow blogger and Bachtrack reviewer Jane Shuttleworth offers her views on this issue

A riposte to Sarah Crompton’s article by a music blogger

A handful of music blogs I admire and follow:

Who or what inspired you to take up the piano?

My grandfather had an upright piano in the front room of his house in Ipswich. This room was kept for Sundays and special occasions. He liked to play Methodist hymns, excerpts from Haydn and Beethoven and old music hall songs. I loved to sit next to him as he played, or leaf through the music in the piano stool, with its special antique smell and friable, crumbly pages.

There was lots of music at home when I was growing up: on the radio, LPs and from my father, who was a fine amateur clarinettist. When I was in bed, I used to listen to him practising Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto to Music Minus One: for a while I believed he had a whole orchestra in the sitting room with him!

I think I was about 5 or 6 when I started piano lessons with Mrs Scott in Sutton Coldfield. My piano was an early 20th-century Challen upright. It had lived in a conservatory for two years before it came to us and it needed quite a lot of restoration, but once overhauled it was a really nice instrument, of which I was very fond.

My parents were keen concert-goers and my love of live classical music developed in childhood. We went to many concerts at Birmingham Old Town Hall where a conductor with wild hair conducted the CBSO (this was Louis Fremaux, pre-Simon Rattle). I loved, and still do, the etiquette of concerts – the excited buzz of anticipation in the foyer beforehand, reading the programme, sinking in to the plush seats. Once a year, as a treat, I would be taken to London to go to the Proms, and we also went to the opera and ballet regularly. I was lucky enough to see/hear some of the “greats”: Ashkenazy, Brendel, Lupu, du Pre, Barenboim, Lill. I grew up thinking classical music was something everyone could enjoy and engage with (and music was readily available in state school in the early 1980s) – it felt entirely normal to me – and it was only when I went to secondary school, where my talent for music (I was tested for perfect pitch in front of my entire class, an excruciatingly embarrassing episode – and I don’t have perfect pitch!) marked me out as “different” in a school where being “a team player” was important. Music and the school music department became a place of escape and I threw myself into the school’s musical activities: I took up the clarinet so that I could play in the school orchestra, and joined the choir, recorder group and wind band.

I took all my ABRSM grade exams while still at school, and really wanted to apply for music college, but a rather throwaway comment by my music teacher that I perhaps “wasn’t good enough” to audition led to me to follow a different path into further education and I studied Medieval literature at university. I stopped playing the piano seriously at 19 and hardly touched the instrument until I was in my late 30s and my mother bought me a digital piano, urging me to start playing again. Not long after I turned 40 I had a brand new Yamaha acoustic piano and had begun teaching local school children and a handful of adults. By the time I was 50, I was preparing to take a Fellowship performance diploma, having passed my Licentiate and Associate diplomas with distinction.

Who or what were the most important influences on your musical life and career?

My parents nurtured and encouraged a love of classical music. This was enhanced by my then piano teacher Mrs Murdoch and particularly my music teacher at secondary school, an incredibly energetic and enthusiastic man who organised all sorts of wonderful musical activities in and outside of school, including trips to dress rehearsals at the Royal Opera House (where I saw Tosca, Billy Budd, Peter Grimes, La Bohème and Turandot, amongst others). In c1981, the school choir took part in a performance of Elgar’s Dream of Gerontius with massed school choirs at the Royal Albert Hall, an unforgettable experience, which has stayed with me ever since.

Since I started blogging and writing about music, encounters with other pianists and musicians all feed into my musical life and inform my approach to the piano. My study with a number of master teachers and concert pianists while preparing for professional performance diplomas has had a huge impact on my confidence and skill as a pianist, and the deep learning that is required to prepare for such qualifications enables me to pick up new repertoire without feeling daunted by its challenges.

What have been the greatest challenges of your career so far?

Convincing people that being a musician and writer is “a proper job”.

Dealing with ongoing imposter syndrome, which I think comes from not having attended music college at 18. I don’t think it’s entirely a bad thing, however, as I believe it keeps one humble.

Which performances are you most proud of?

I played Messiaen’s Regard de la Vierge from the ‘Vingt Regards’ at an event hosted by Murray McLachlan at Steinway Hall in 2011 as part of the preparations for my Associate performance diploma. It was the first time I had played a Steinway D piano and the first time I’d played the Messiaen in public. The feedback from Murray and the response from the audience was wonderful and an incredible boost to my diploma preparations and confidence.

In recent years, I have had the great pleasure of performing at a friend’s house concerts in his beautiful home in the Sussex countryside. A lovely setting, convivial atmosphere, friendly audience and a truly stunning Steinway B piano make these concerts the best I’ve ever experienced, and I was very pleased with my performance of the final movement of Schumann’s Fantasie in C, Op 17 at last winter’s house concert. I have yet to learn the other two movements of the Schumann…..!

Which particular works do you think you play best?

I recently read an interview with the pianist Richard Goode, whom I much admire, in which he said he chooses to “perform only the pieces that will be best for you and the audience” and that one should understand one’s own limits. As pianists we have a vast repertoire and one should never feel under pressure to be able to “play everything”. I used to think I was somehow failing if I did not have the requisite number of Bach Preludes & Fugues, Beethoven Sonatas, Chopin Etudes or Debussy Preludes in my fingers; now I just play what interests me and what I believe I can play well.

How do you make your repertoire choices?

I play whatever music interests me, and my tastes change constantly. More and more I am choosing to play 20th-century and contemporary piano music, and the wilder shores of repertoire – I like oddities and lesser-known works. These are often easier to play than the core canon as one is not constantly up against the weight of history and perceived “right ways” to play this repertoire.

Having said all this, Schubert remains my favourite composer; I really should play more of his piano music!

I am currently working on a programme called A Sense of Place – piano music inspired by or evocative of real or imagined places and landscapes. The pieces include movements from Alan Hovhaness’ Visionary Landscapes, John Cage’s In A Landscape, Cyril Scott’s Lotus Land and Britten’s Night Piece.

Favourite pieces to perform? Listen to?

To play, perhaps Bill Evans’ Peace Piece. I played it at a charity concert a few years ago and the audience loved its meditative atmosphere.

I get sent CDs to review all the time and listen fairly widely as a result, though I always tend towards piano music. If I had to pick a favourite recording, it would be Resonance de l’Originaire by Maria Joao Pires.

Most memorable concert experience?

It has to be Steven Osborne’s performance of the complete Vingt Regards at the Queen Elizabeth Hall – I have now heard him play this monument of 20th-century piano music twice, and on both occasions the experience has been transcendent, beautiful, moving, and incredibly profound. Talking to Steven in the bar afterwards, he simply said “one just has to go with this music”.

What do you consider to be the most important ideas and concepts to impart to aspiring musicians?

Be true to your musical self and try not to be distracted or downhearted by what others in your profession are doing. Don’t endlessly compare yourself to your peers or to others in the profession – this can lead to feelings of dismotivation, dissatisfaction and worse, depression. Navigate your own course to find your own musical identity and voice.

Live and love life fully: go to concerts, exhibitions, films, read, eat, socialise, enjoy. Everything feeds the artistic temperament!

What is your definition of success?

Seeing people come out of a concert truly touched or moved by the music they’ve hard.

Witnessing a piano student’s “lightbulb moment”

Being able to play Schumann’s Fantasie in C, Op 17 in its entirety! (one day!!)

Frances Wilson is a pianist, piano teacher, writer and blogger on classical music and pianism as The Cross-Eyed Pianist, described by concert pianist Peter Donohoe as “an important voice in the piano world”.

franceswilson.co.uk