TEACHOUT DOESN'T GET IT

posted by James Reel

As you know if you even glance at arts-related headlines online, the Cleveland Plain Dealer’s former classical music critic, Donald Rosenberg, lost his suit against the paper, which he filed in response to being reassigned after a string of negative reviews of the Cleveland Orchestra’s music director, Franz Welser-Möst. I haven’t commented on the situation because seemingly everyone else in the arts world already has, usually in support of Rosenberg. But I can’t help pointing out the sheer idiocy of one remark in Terry Teachout’s discussion of the situation in the Wall Street Journal:

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?

No, the editors have to ask no such thing. Was Rosenberg supposed to write the occasional favorable review just for the sake of variety, even if he continued to believe that the performances were mediocre? (It’s not without reason, by the way, that during his years in London Franz Welser-Möst had picked up the nickname “Frankly Worst Than Most.”) Rosenberg’s job was to report and analyze what he heard, and it was the conductor’s and the orchestra board’s responsibility to ask why the performances had become predictable and redundant. Teachout, of all people, ought to know that.