A Critic's Friends

While readers are frequently a music critic’s enemies, musicians are not necessarily his friends. In my experience, if they are composers or performers, they can be as disdainful of critics as anybody else. But if friendship is possible, or indeed desirable, it can be worth cultivating.

The days when music critics, as a matter of principle, refrained from getting to know, or even speaking to, performers because it might supposedly influence their judgement are far in the past. It is something that used to be said of old-school critics such as Ernest Newman, whose presence would strike fear into orchestral players and whose shiny bald head could be easily spotted in the audience.  The tenor Ian Bostridge, in his latest book, has written that he can always see who is sitting down below when he is giving a recital in the Wigmore Hall and recalls the time he noticed a distinguished pianist with the music on his knee, visibly jabbing his finger on a page of a Schubert song and nudging the fellow musician who was sitting next to him.

The art of the newspaper interview, anathema to people like Ernest Newman, is not now something automatically shunned by serious critics. Indeed, from the start of my career, I have happily practised it and regarded it as part of my job, enabling me sometimes to make new friends - though occasionally enemies. Yet my predecessor on The Scotsman never “did” interviews, and it would never have occurred to him to do so.

Befriending performers admittedly has its risks. Sir Charles Mackerras, before starting lunch, invariably asked, “Who is paying?”  At least it instantly cleared up what could have been an awkward problem of etiquette. More difficult can be the interview which turns out, when printed, to seem in some way insulting.

A single even faintly critical reference and the relationship can be severed forever. It has happened to me more than once, and it is no good telling the outraged composer or performer that one’s mild rebuke has come in the wake of many glowing appraisals. The criticism, however slight, can be unforgiven. The drama critic Kenneth Tynan used to say that he was ready to flinch every time he entered a theatre for fear that an offended playwright or actor might be sitting in the audience.

The literary agent Giles Gordon, who sometimes reviewed for the Evening Standard, used to be a wary member of the same London club as the novelist Kingsley Amis. One day, having given Amis’s latest novel the thumbs down, he was horrified to find himself lunching with a friend a few tables away from the celebrated author. Trying not to catch Amis’s eye, he asked his friend to tell him if Amis was looking at him. His friend gave him the all clear. Giles thereupon looked up from his plate to find Amis glaring directly at him and giving him, in full view of everybody, an enormous “V” sign. Such is a critic’s life.
1 May 2015