Courageous critic cut off at the knees by cowardly Cleveland newspaper

 Just when you thought that not much could get worse in the troubled fields of newspapering and music criticism, the Cleveland Plain Dealer has silenced one of the country's most respected, fair-minded, and independent critics, Don Rosenberg, over his regular -- and wholly accurate -- criticism of the Cleveland Orchestra's sub-par music director Franz Welser-Möst. Tim Smith, of the Baltimore Sun, lays out the latest developments below.  


For now let me add that Don was and is a model of what a critical voice should be, calling things as he sees and hears them and demanding that the standards of one of the world's great orchestras be maintained. Like Don, I was blown away by Welser-Möst's Rusalka (see below) which I saw as a staged opera in Salzburg last month and which Don heard and reviewed in a concert version in Cleveland in the spring. It may very well be that Welser-Möst is a fine opera conductor, but he would not be the first or the only of that breed who really has no business leading a symphony orchestra when he does not have 150 singers standing on his head.  I say these things having heard Cleveland a number of times with Welser-Möst in its own wonderful Severance Hall and other Cleveland venues and on tour, in standard and unusual repertoire, commissions, in purely orchestral works, and with instrumental and vocal soloists.



 After six years at the helm, Cleveland has renewed the Lightweight from Linz (left) through 2018 (!). That is their own doing and, I suppose, as a non-Clevelander, I have to say their own business. But that their management and trustees should have been able to prevail on an independent and once highly-regarded newspaper to tell its chief critic what he can and cannot review is a journalistic scandal of the first -- and worst -- order. 


Free Don Rosenberg!

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Cleveland critic who dared criticize is reassigned

       Posted by Tim Smith on September 18, 2008 

Don Rosenberg, music critic at the Cleveland Plain Dealer for 16

years, was told yesterday by the paper's editor that he will no longer

be covering the famed Cleveland Orchestra. He has been given the
option of reviewing other musical events in town, as well as dance.
Another writer at the paper, Zack Lewis, was told he will now be
orchestra's reviewer. First, the full disclosure: I've known Don and
Zach for years; both are members of the Music Critics Association of
North America and its board of directors; Don is the immediate past
president of that organization; I'm the current president. Now, the
full, unbridled response to this news: It stinks.

Music critics are hired to deliver critical opions. If those opinions
are not popular with some people, tough. As long as the critic
demonstrates musical knowledge and a keen ear for what is involved in
the art of music-making, the critic is fulfilling the job
requirements. Don's musical background is as good as it gets, his
evaluations reasoned and sensitive. He has covered the Cleveland
Orchestra for nearly three decades (including a stint with another
area paper), and he's the author of the definitive book about that
orchestra. So what did he do wrong? He has questioned, more than once,
the sanctity of the Cleveland Orchestra's music director, Franz
Welser-Möst, who started in 2002 and has had his contract renewed a
couple times, the last extension taking him all the way to 2018. Don
has judged that Welser-Möst is lacking in certain abilities in certain
repertoire, that he doesn't necessarily get the best out of music or
the eminent ensemble. Yet, Don is also the first to admire what the
conductor does best, as was the case a few months ago after a
performance of Dvorak's Rusalka. Don wrote that Welser-Möst "was in
his element ... shaping a performance full of atmosphere and energy.
He emphasized flexibility and shaded Dvorak's luminous paeans to
nature with tenderness." Don went on to suggest that more spacious
phrasing would have benefited a couple of passages, "but Rusalka is
surely one of the highlights of Welser-Möst's tenure."

Take a look back through the Plain Dealer archives and you'll find
plenty of balanced examples like that. A critic hell-bent on bashing a
conductor wouldn't hear a single worthy note. But, apparently, some
Cleveland Orchestra boosters can't accept any negative words about the
music director. I imagine they dismiss as irrelevant the fact that the
orchestra, while on tour, has been known to generate reviews by other
critics expressing reservations about Welser-Möst. Of course, there's
nothing that can be done about out-of-town naysayers, but there's
always good old-fashioned lobbying that can be tried at home. That, it
seems, has now been successful. The Plain Dealer has clearly caved
into pressure from a faction representing the orchestra and the man on
its podium. By silencing Don, those myopic folks must think they've
achieved a great victory. They haven't. They've made a venerable
newspaper look cheap and act cowardly. They've made a sterling
orchestra look a little less so. Ultimately, this calculated attack on
a music critic doing his job casts a suspicious light on his
detractors and their motivations.

Like Somerset Maugham wrote: "People ask you for criticism, but they
only want praise." Any orchestra's player, conductor, board member,
lofty patron or ordinary ticket-buy who only wants to read praise has
missed the whole point of the artisitic process. Not to mention a free
press. Then again, any newspaper that would silence a serious,
bona-fide voice because some people don't like hearing it may need a
refresher course, too.