norman lebrecht
June 27, 2024
A few years earlier than Covid, the NY Occasions stopped reviewing all of the classical music that’s match to print. After a century or so of protecting the musical waterfront, the paper scrapped smaller venues and confined itself to large nights on the Met, the Philharmonic and Carnegie Corridor. No extra town-hall debuts, no extra feelgood symphonies.
Since Covid, issues bought worse. Not solely do visiting ensembles and recitalists hardly get opinions, some actually news-making occasions slip by way of the editorial web. Two eyepopping current omissions have been failures to assessment Gurrelieder at Carnegie Corridor and Kathleen Battle’s sold-out recital on the Metropolitan Opera (which bought the Wall Road Journal one among its highest arts web page click on charges).
That is extra than simply an govt resolution to withdraw from an artform. It’s a failure of journalism at newsstand stage if the Occasions can’t be trusted to inform information from PR-shmooze. And, proper now, it might probably’t.
Current puff-pieces on the Boston and San Francisco symphonies confirmed Occasions reporters to be skewed and ill-informed. A fly-in function on Vienna’s two opera homes ignored stagnancy on the Staatsoper and a speedy turnaround of music administrators on the Volksoper. The depth of data that prevailed on the Occasions when its critics included John Rockwell, Tim Web page, Anne Midgette and Allan Kozinn has dissipated right into a journo-school haze of he-said, she-said. Zachary Woolfe, the chief music critic since 2022, is conspicuous by his low visibility.
The impression on classical music in New York is extensively felt. Promoters say a chunk within the Occasions is not definitely worth the effort. Performers really feel deserted by a paper they as soon as used first for puff-quotes. Reader feedback concerning the lack of opinions are censored out by moderators. There’s a rising sense that the Occasions not speaks to the opera and concertgoing group.
Go forward, contradict me.
It is a public dialog that should occur. If the Occasions received’t allow it, let’s begin the ball rolling right here.
