HOW TO FAKE A CLASSICAL CONCERT REVIEW

posted by James Reel

    Hey, kids! A fresh concert season is upon us, and your daily newspaper needs you! Editors have finally gotten over the silly notion, prevalent from about 1975 to 1995, that newspapers should waste money and office space on full-time classical music critics. For 20 years they squandered their resources on deadwood critics who claimed that only they were qualified to write reviews because they’d spent their lives going to concerts on their own time, collecting classical recordings, reading as much as they could about classical music, and maybe even playing instruments or writing their own compositions. How foolish! Anybody can review a classical concert. After all, cub reporters are routinely shuffled from the court beat to cops to city council. Why waste money on a one-trick critic when you can send a low-paid sports agate clerk to a concert to do some real reporting, rather than that silly pontificating that nobody wants to read? (Well, maybe a few old farts constituting the newspaper’s traditional core readership might care, but they don’t count; to survive, today’s cutting-edge newspapers need to be attracting younger, poorly educated non-readers!)
    So you say you’ve never covered a classical concert, let alone attended one, but you’re being sent to opening night at the symphony and you’re expected to turn around a review in an hour? No problem! Just follow these five easy steps, and your editors will be thrilled!
    1. To fill at least half of those 10 gaping column-inches of space you’ve been awarded, plug in a lot of background on the music. Nothing technical—jargon and arcane concepts are fine for the sports section and business page, but you’re in the features section, right next to that hard-hitting back-to-school article on trends in teen piercings. Keep it light, anecdotal, and personality-oriented. And if you don’t have access to CD notes or Internet sources so you can copy stuff into the review before you go to the show, relax! You can always crib from the program notes at the concert.
    2. Mention how many people attended the concert. Body counts are very important to editors. Don’t worry about putting this into the context of attendance at other classical-music events in your town; you don’t have enough space for context.
    3. Be sure to describe the gestures of the conductor, the swaying and facial expressions of various musicians, and the couture of any female soloist. This adds color and drama to any review!
    4. Always use the word “sublime” in relation to anything by Mozart and Beethoven, and describe everything written since 1910 as “harshly dissonant,” unless you’re covering the annual Kenny G pops concert.
    5. Devote whatever remaining space you have to an account of the audience’s reaction to the performance. Why sweat over forming your own opinions when you can take your cue from the crowd?