So, trying to find any light to shed about the flap over Dejan Lazic’s request to have a critical review removed, and not really sure if there is any larger lesson. Neither the web nor music criticism works in such a way, much as we might wish they might–performers and critics both were prefer their efforts weren’t in the permanent record, but now that is how it works.
One positive outcome of this is that it has gotten me to go listen to Lazic for myself. Interesting pianist, unusual combo of old-school rhetorical flourish and super-modern pin-point clarity. He manages to engage me in a work I have come to loathe (after a teenage infatuation with it), Brahms alternately pompous and cloying B-minor Rhapsody. Lazic doesn’t quite scrub all the triteness out of it for me, but it definitely is a fresh take. Suggests his playing would be well-suited for Liszt.
