# Have you ever bought a CD despite (or because of) a bad review?



## Fsharpmajor (Dec 14, 2008)

I saw this LSO CD of Bruckner's Ninth selling for only £4.00 and decided to check whether Classics Today had a review of it:









The review, by David Hurwitz, turned out to be *extremely* unfavourable:

*http://www.classicstoday.com/review.asp?ReviewNum=5831*

I decided to buy it anyway, though, to see if it was really that bad. As it turns out, I could live with the poor sound quality if the performance were better, but it's all wrong: too slow, and the phrasing is so mechanical that it might as well be a robot conducting. It was quite instructive to compare it with George Tintner's Naxos recording, which in my opinion is very good, and I found that the experience actually helped me to appreciate Bruckner more.

(That's not to say that Colin Davis and the LSO are useless; I have recordings of them that I really like, especially their _Harold in Italy_).

Has anybody else either deliberately wasted their money on an experiment like this? In my case it was actually worthwhile, but if I do it again it won't be with a piece as long as Bruckner's Ninth.


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## Ukko (Jun 4, 2010)

If one is familiar enough with a reviewer's tastes, his reviews can be 'inspirational' even when unfavorable. Hurwitz, foe example, has idiosyncrasies and a few pet peeves. A longtime poster to the newsgroup rec.music.classical.recordings with the initials DK was quite informative, his strong likes being similar to mine. His dislikes were too numerous to be useful though.


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## mmsbls (Mar 6, 2011)

I only once got a CD that I knew had a bad review. I didn't buy it, but my wife bought it (essentially by mistake) as a present. The CD was Kremer and Argerich playing Mendelssohn's Concerto for Violin Piano and Strings.










I had read a professional review that called the performance "almost hilarious" due to the tempos used. When I heard the CD, I agreed completely. I really can't listen to that performance although I have another recording now that I love. Interestingly, Amazon has 5 customer reviews that all rank the CD a 5 (highest ranking).

I would say I tend to trust professional reviews, but the amateur ones are hit and miss.


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## Conor71 (Feb 19, 2009)

I can't really think of any off the top of my head? - I have often bought Disc's with no reviews off Amazon but I don't think I would take a risk on a Disc which had a greater proportion of negative than postive reviews


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

Two such cd's I can think of, that garnered very negative reviews on classicstoday, are below - Schubert's piano trios on EMI played by French musicians, and the Wheeler version of Mahler's 10th symphony on Naxos. The reviews said that the Schubert interpretation was glacial, icy and unemotional & that Wheeler's orchestration of the Mahler symphony was unidiomatic. After careful listening to these discs, I think that those reviewers opinions was pure bull****. I was already familiar with the Schubert trios, having owned the Naxos recording previously. I hadn't heard Mahler's 10th before, but I have been familiar with other works of his for years, surely whether Wheeler's orchestration is "idiomatic" or not is purely a matter of opinion? So the reviewer favoured Deryck Cooke's orchestration, so what? These kinds of reviews don't lower my opinions of the performers, they lower my opinions of classicstoday. I agree that Hurwitz is an idiot (as a reviewer, but as a writer of sleevenotes, he's okay). I'm highly sceptical of reviews anyway, and if the discs come at budget price, I usually just jump in and buy anyway.

I'm quite flexible with how things are interpreted, I leave the nuances and fine points up to the musicians, they are the professionals who know the music inside out and have studied & worked with it for years. I can hear the differences between various performances, but these differences are secondary for me to the works themselves. I'm more interested in the music, the history behind it, the couplings/bonus tracks on the disc rather than any minor flaws of the performance or recording. I'm basically not too **** or fussed about this, life is too short. In any case, every performance is like a failure - not a total one, but a partial one at least. The best performance of these works was probably enshrined in the composer's head at the time of their creation. The only thing faithful to this is the score itself, any interpretation is going to transmit different aspects of this "text." Much like a performance of say, a Shakespeare play. It would be fascinating to know how Beethoven "heard" his own music in his mind, but this we'll never know. Heck, we don't even know things that happened in reality, before the era of recordings. How do we know what's an "idiomatic" performance of a keyboard piece by say J.S. Bach, Chopin or Liszt if we have no recordings documenting how they played? In these cases, "idiomatic" is just bull****, it's an illusion. I care less about this than the passion, craftsmanship and commitment of the players...


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## HarpsichordConcerto (Jan 1, 2010)

If one is already familiar with the performer(s), then who really cares what the negative reviews have to say? Most of us tend to stick to artists that we are already familiar with. A "bad recording" tends to be an exception only every now and then; of these, I find many tend to be poor sound recordings rather than the performance itself. In the case of opera on DVD/Blu-ray, the bad recordings are the ones with the extremely non-sensical avantgarde staging.


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## regressivetransphobe (May 16, 2011)

Not a particular CD, but the reason I got into Schoenberg was hearing so many classical purists put him down. I heard Pierrot Lunaire, then his serenades, then Variations... etc, etc. Now they're all very special to me.


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## Fsharpmajor (Dec 14, 2008)

Here's a review of Sergei Lyapunov's piano concertos which isn't really unfavourable, but warns you in a fairly good-humoured way what you are going to get:

*http://www.classicstoday.com/review.asp?ReviewNum=5891*

Would you buy the CD? I was intrigued, so I did.


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## Guest (May 16, 2011)

I admit that I don't have a knowledgeable background in classical music, and only know what sounds good to me. So I do tend to lean on reviews more as crutches, I am sure, than most. In general, I like classicstoday.com, and have found numerous great recordings through it. Even from Hurwitz. I suspect, though, that really great recordings are pretty easy to spot, and it is in trickier recordings that reviewers need to be more discerning. In general, I don't understand most of the intricacies they describe for why they do or don't like something (I'll admit my ignorance here by saying I have no clue what the hell it means to say that a performance is very idiomatic). 

I like a lot of Hurwitz' reviews, but, some seem off. He recently trashed a recording by Vanska of Bruckner's 4th symphony simply because he didn't like the version Vanska chose. In general, I like Vanska, so I will probably pick up the recording anyways, because I also love Bruckner's 4th. If it is a performer I know I like (or a conductor, for that matter), I'll probably give the recording the benefit of the doubt over the reviewer. Another example with Hurwitz is his list of go-to recordings for Mahler symphonies. We have some overlap, but there are a lot of areas we diverge, and I have gone with what I thought I liked.


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## haydnfan (Apr 13, 2011)

I don't pay attention to reviews professional or amateur. If I did I would not have rented a couple of operas that were highly praised here, but received mediocre ratings on netflix. Guess what? The performances rocked! I prefer finding opinions on music forums, instead of reading user reviews and going to classics today, musicweb etc


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## Stasou (Apr 23, 2011)

I've thought about buying the Temirkanov Tchaikovsky cycle and probably will someday, despite some bad reviews. There are plenty of reviews saying that the performances aren't nearly exciting because they are so profoundly Russian. In my mind, the best recordings or performances of Tchaikovsky symphonies are the most Russian ones, no matter how exciting they are. By the way, anyone have opinions on this recording?


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## Vaneyes (May 11, 2010)

HvK's '64 "Rite". Stravinsky deemed it, "Tempo di hoochie-coochie." I still have it and love it. Also, to my ears this "DG 100 Masterworks" has a better remastered "Pictures" than the later DG Originals.


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## kv466 (May 18, 2011)

Colin sometimes gets it really nice and sometimes falls flat on his face...just part of the exploration.


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## hemidemisemiquaver (Apr 22, 2011)

HarpsichordConcerto said:


> If one is already familiar with the performer(s), then who really cares what the negative reviews have to say? Most of us tend to stick to artists that we are already familiar with. A "bad recording" tends to be an exception only every now and then; of these, I find many tend to be poor sound recordings rather than the performance itself. In the case of opera on DVD/Blu-ray, the bad recordings are the ones with the extremely non-sensical avantgarde staging.


I first misread a first sentence as "performers who really care what the negative reviews have to say", and talking about that, the only case like that I know is a director smiting hip and thigh a poor fellow who clobbered his film in press. 

Talking about reviews, I usually refer to them just to be aware of recently released records. I wouldn't say they're completely useless though - reading smashers sometimes is therapeutic, in case when you were unlucky enough to waste time listening to something absolutely not worth it.


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