Who do you trust among the critics?

For me, RO has been the critic for whom I've had the greatest respect. I regret there's so little of him in Gramophone these days, and that so much I'd have expected him to review - especially Bruckner - goes to RC. I've nothing against Mr Cowan, it's just that there's a bit too much of him about.

Richard Osborne, one of the few to be trusted as a Beethoven reviewer. I used to listen to Radio 3 Saturday morning record review in the days when he was on. Agree with HMV about Bryce Morrison but gave up on him when he declared Argerich as the greatest living pianist and he is presumably responsible for her inclusion in the Hall of Fame.

Edward Greenfield , Ivan March & Robert Layton generally pretty fair (and in the Penguin Guide). Rob Cowan blotted his copy book over the Davis/LSO/Berlioz much discussed on another thread.

Jeremy Nicholas in particular for his appreciation of historic piano recordings and 78s (although was he also not tainted by the Hatto affair?).

I too was mystified how the critics were taken in by the names of non-existent conductors and orchestras. This might have happened with some independent labels in LP days when names were hidden because of contractual  restrictions. The RPO in Beecham's time recorded pseudonymously for Westminster and the "RCA Victor Orchestra" no doubt also hid some more familiar names,  but surely not today when everything is so much more open.

Whether Barrington-Coupe was motivated by devotion to his wife or he tried it on as a money making exercise only he can tell us but he was a pioneer in the early days of LP making first recordings of works by Bax and employing the young Vernon Handley with his Guildford Philharmonic and making a number of recordings with the great pianist Sergio Fiorentino. In his Bax biography Lewis Foreman actually highly rates Bax's symphonic variations with the real Hatto. 

Yes, it's nice if you can find a critic who you know to share your taste.  But, there is more to it than that (of course).  For instance, in the 'old days' The Gramophone used a much smaller roster of critics and gave them more space to write.  Major works were regularly reviewed by only one or two critics so it was easily possible for me to get a feeling for whether I would enjoy the recording being reviewed, even if my taste was quite different from the reviewer.  I go back to the days of Alec Robertson, Trevor Harvey, William Mann, etc.

Now, with so many critics and so little space allocated to each, with a few and decreasing number of honourable exceptions, I find it really difficult to assess recordings based on the reviews.  Fortunately though, there are more and more chances to hear at least excerpts from many recordings before you buy!

Interesting Tagalie....I've only got Fingerhut/Thomson but presumably Hatto's now gone for good and no longer available. Had wondered about Ashley Wass's version but with Winter Legends I found little to choose between him & Fingerhut.

Now you've got me worried. I just ordered the Wass recordings of both the Symphonic Variations and Winter Legends. I'm not keen on Fingerhut in either of these works and my Hatto is a tape which, sooner or later, will go the way of most of my tapes and develop pitch waver. Too bad this recording got washed away with all the others after the scandal floodgates opened.

I'm not sure there isn't a distinction to be made between critics and reviewers.   I instinctively mistrust anyone trying to sell me a disc or an artist - it's rather a giveaway when a writer who doesn't do either criticism or review interviews an artist who just happens to have a new release on the market in order to bolster their image, but for reviewers to do  this disqualifies them as critics, for me, anyway.   I'm also a little suspicious of the compilers of comparative reviews who limit themselves to currently obtainable discs and then conclude that a relatively recent disc made or recorded in the UK is somehow more deserving than, say, Toscanini, Giulini, Klemperer or Bernstein, or Sviatoslav Richter or Serkin.  Even if they don't play the authentic performance style card.  Critical styles change too, as readers of the Gramophone archive will not need telling.  So does taste.  What Alec Robertson wrote about the first issue of the Solti Gotterdammerung is still worth reading, but I don't suppose many would now agree with it.

There seems to be a constraint imposed by relations with the industry.   In the days of the appalling Toscanini NBC 78s of the late 1940s and early 1950s, I seem to recall, The Record Guide, a publication of immense authority, limited itself to the reflection that they "did not sound well on British machines".   The convention now seems to be that the faults of an issue are only commented on when it is reissued after a year or two, and then, in those publications which rate by stars (as the Record Guide once did), only indirectly.   Folk who write within those constraints aren't critics but reviewers, surely.  Obviously they have a part to play in the game, but......