Madam, - Two correspondents to your newspaper (Nov 8th) do not care for Andrew Johnstone's review of the recent concert given by Our Lady's Choral Society in the NCH.
They charge him with discussing the music's merit (or to be accurate its lack of merit) at the expense of chronicling the performance.
This is not entirely accurate, because the review did consider aspects of the performance too.
What your correspondents seem to suggest is that there is only one way of writing a review. That is not so, for the music itself must be at the centre of every performance.
When a work is new and fantastical, such as Jenkins's Armed Man, then it is the function of the responsible critic to address its merits.
Andrew Johnstone has done this, rightly pointing out that its popularity should not be equated with its merit. For we must not run round in circles believing it is good because it is popular and popular because it is good.
One of the greatest critics of the early 20th century, Samuel Langford of the Manchester Guardian, concerned himself almost exclusively with the music, unlike many critics for whom reviewing consisted of little more than a perpetual witch-hunt for unstable tempi, wrong notes and inept phrasing.
We are fortunate that the reviewing team of The Irish Times offers a range of insightful perspectives on the musical life of this country and not merely a catalogue of performance-induced visceral reactions. - Yours, etc,
Dr THOMAS McCARTHY Department of History, Trinity College, Dublin 2.