Post-stealing and critics who say useless things

Will the people at Disintegrating Organic Tissue Matter kill me if I use one of their posts again as fodder for my own post? Ok, so I won't do that, except to mention that I was practically seething when I read this review of Hilary Hahn's recording of Schoenberg's violin concerto that they refer to in their post.

I'm seething for different reasons than they are. For more details, you can read the post and then my comments on their site.

Hahn is not one of my favorite players (I grant that she plays beautifully, and that she's a virtuoso; it's just a matter of playing style for me), but this CD review is is a bit unfair.

Without the extraneous comments, it would've been a fine appraisal of her interpretation of Schoenberg's Violin Concerto, but she taints an otherwise positive review of Hahn's playing with projections of either a)how she used to play: "wooden", "obedient", "the kind of virtuosic but rather empty fireworks piece that she seemed to me well suited for" and "slightly thin tone"or b)how the author thinks she might've played the piece: "clotted", "ferocious virtuosity". Either way, ouch.

I'm not saying that critics aren't allowed to have negative opinions. It's one thing if the author was negatively reviewing this particular recording. But she gives this recording a fairly good review, and talks about other unnamed recordings of Hahn in which she sounded wooden, obedient, ferocious, etc.

This is both irrelevant and unfair to her. Or maybe not. For all I know, maybe this is common practice among reviewers. It's fine if they can do it respectfully and keep it brief, as this critic does.

But this projection of how Hahn used to or might have sounded adds absolutely nothing in this particular case. Can you imagine a review of her when she's 35? Are people going to continue bringing up her past flaws?--e.g. "Ten years ago, Hilary Hahn used to have a brash style. But this recording of xyz shows her more refined side. It doesn't have the rough edges of her recording of x."

Ok, now I must go study my Chinese and music.