U-turn
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March 16, 2005
Who is the critic's critic?
Last week I attended the concert City Life. It took De Volkskrant six days to publish a review.
The review was nice for Hans Koolmees, good for Terry Riley's In C, not so nice for Gerard Beljon, more positive for Jacob ter Veldhuis and good for Steve Reich's City Life.
Particularly the paragraph about Gerard Beljon is interesting, especially related to Kyle Gann's recent postings about the downtown/uptown issue.
The Volkskrant critic Frits van der Waa doesn't hear more than a harmony exercise. What he missed in his harmonic pre-occupation and failed to mention in his review was the highly original way of dealing with samples: way different from what Reich and Ter Verldhuis do.
If I wanted to attend this concert in another venue I might be put off by this review, although it wasn't too bad about the concert. It just tells me Frits van der Waa's preferences and pre-occupations differ from mine.
But it does leave me with a question: Who is the critic's critic?
Posted by Renske at 13:51 UTC | permanent link