Saturday, August 21, 2010

Damage asessment ...

... Critic in the Courtroom. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

When the critic of a one-paper town decides that (in Mr. Rosenberg's words) "mediocrity takes up residence . . . when Welser-Möst is on the podium," and when his reviews of the orchestra's concerts consist in large part of variations on that grim theme, the editors of his paper have to ask themselves a tough question: At what point does so oft- repeated an opinion become predictable and redundant?


This is precisely right. And so is this:

Rather than replace Mr. Rosenberg with a younger critic, Ms. Goldberg could just as easily have ordered the two men to split the assignment of covering the orchestra's concerts right down the middle. Criticism is not an exact science, and the paper would have done its readers a service by regularly publishing contrasting points of view on the city's No. 1 cultural venture.

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