# Quotable reviews



## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Sometimes a review will catch my eye (or ear, depending). Here, David Hurwitz reviews the Brahms symphonies as played by Philippe Jordan and the Wiener Symphoniker. His intro: “Talk about a waste! Philippe Jordan leads a vacuous, wholly unnecessary Brahms cycle whose poverty of ideas is matched by ridiculous packaging and pretentious, self-regarding notes.”

In the body of the review, he calls the set “totally, utterly, completely useless, pointless excrescences on the rump of classical music.”

Obviously pulling no punches here… :lol:

Do you have any quotable reviews?


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

I have no reviews to quote offhand, but i have the all-time best composer's response to a bad review. 

"I am sitting in the smallest room in my house. I have your review before me. In a moment it will be behind me." (Max Reger)


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## mikeh375 (Sep 7, 2017)

Bernard shaw on Brahms...

_"The forthcoming performances in October will be welcomed by all except those who incautiously attended the benumbing 4th day of the 1889 festival, on which occasion the whole West riding was plunged into listless gloom by an unprovoked performance of Brahms' Requiem."_

...and poor old Igor, this from the Boston Herald in1924...

_Who wrote this fiendish 'Rite of Spring,'
What rite had he to rite the thing,
Against our helpless ears to fling
It's crash,clash, cling, clang bing, bang, bing?

And then to call it 'Rite of Sping.'
The season when on joyous wing
The birds melodious carols sing
And harmony's in everything.

He who could write the 'Rite of Spring'
If I be right, by right should swing!_

...a bit harsh perhaps.


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## RICK RIEKERT (Oct 9, 2017)

There is the ever reliable Peter G. Davis' memorable review of the Metropolitan Opera’s production of La Traviata, designed and directed by Franco Zeffirelli:

"It would take a small book to detail all the backstage intrigue and cast changes that helped sabotage the Metropolitan Opera’s new La Traviata production. Franco Zeffirelli turns out to be the principal villain. Zeffirelli has more or less abandoned the cast – and Verdi’s opera, for that matter – to revel in his obsession with interior design. Can this be the same man who, 40 years ago, helped Maria Callas create her legendary Violetta? Hard to believe. A designer-director once considered a theatrical genius has by now pretty much disintegrated into a window dresser.

Violetta’s overstuffed salon is just a teaser for the country villa we behold in Act Two, as huge as a Mussolini train station and cluttered with china bric-a-brac and a jungle of plants – no longer a kept woman, Violetta is apparently trying to decide whether she should open a nursery or a whatnot shop. Flora’s party takes place in a garish hotel lobby choking in lace and spangled red drapery, an appropriately tacky setting for a bullfight ballet that must be seen to be believed, complete with ballerinas dressed as cows in tights and high heels. Zeffirelli saves his most childish coup for the last scene. Violetta’s sickroom rises on a stage elevator to return us to the Act One salon so that the dying woman can rush downstairs and expire in Alfredo’s arms – a mindless scenic innovation that does absolutely nothing for the opera. Perhaps all this irrelevant decoration would not seem so irritating if Zeffirelli had paid any attention to the drama or the people who make it live. On the contrary, the whole vacuous production looks like a revival perfunctorily thrown together by a hack house director."


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## Vienne (Aug 21, 2020)

Some wicked wit on Debussy:

“We believe that Shakespeare means Debussy’s ocean when he speaks of taking up arms against a sea of troubles. It may be possible, however, that in the transit to America, the title of this work has been changed. It is possible that Debussy did not intend to call it La Mer, but Le Mal de Mer, which would at once make the tone-picture as clear as day. It is a series of symphonic pictures of sea sickness.”
—Louis Elson, Boston Daily Advertiser, April 22 1907

A particularly harsh attack on Liszt:

“Bülow began with Liszt’s B-minor Sonata. It is impossible to convey through words an idea of this musical monstrosity. Never have I experienced a more contrived and insolent agglomeration of the most disparate elements, a wilder rage, a bloodier battle against all that is musical. At first I felt bewildered, then shocked, and finally overcome with irresistible hilarity… Here all criticism, all discussion must cease. Who has heard that, and finds it beautiful, is beyond help.”
—Edouard Hanslick, 1881

I don’t subscribe to their opinions, though they are memorably written.


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