The demands on a critic are legion: to listen with fresh ears every time, to be unaffected by other writers, to be skeptical of hype, to have a strong musical background and ears good enough to hear what's really happening.

Sensitive musicians find negative criticism at best unpleasant, at worst unbearable. Unfavorable press coverage made Wilhelm Furtwangler stop conducting in America. The soprano Rosa Ponselle is said to have bought every newspaper she could find so people wouldn't be able to read a bad review. Some performers refuse to read reviews, either because they don't care or because they care too much. It's very human to disguise your sensitivity as bravado: many artists worry about reviews, because good ones lead to more work and bad ones cause unemployment.

Oscar Wilde wrote, “The highest as the lowest form of criticism is a mode of autobiography.” If this is true, conductors can only hope that a critic is not a disappointed conductor or (heaven forbid) a musician we refused to hire in the past.