OUR GUIDE TO THE BEST CRITICS: DANCE, ART & CLASSICAL MUSIC

RENAISSANCE MEN, PEDAGOGUES AND POETS | March 13th 2008

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In our third instalment of "Reviewers revered", Julie Kavanagh, Jon Fasman and others name their favourite dance, art and classical-music critics. (Read our introduction to the series here, as well as our selection of favourite book critics and film critics) ...

From INTELLIGENT LIFE magazine, Spring 2008 

In our list below, the name at the top is the nominee, and the nominator is listed as a sign-off. For more about our contributors, see our introduction.

*****

DANCE

ALASTAIR MACAULAY

(The New York Times, several times a week)

Macaulay gave up reviewing theatre for the FT a year ago to become dance critic of the New York Times. A new Renaissance Man and pedagogue (who used to tutor the choreographer Matthew Bourne), he can be as eloquent about an actor's or singer's vocal production as about the technical nuances and historical intricacies of ballet. ~ JULIE KAVANAGH

ART

PETER SCHJELDAHL

(The New Yorker, about twice a month)

Schjeldahl's column manages to balance delectable descriptions, analytical precision and unexpected feeling, from Lucian Freud's "dirty-meringue" textures to a Martin Puryear sculpture that is "consolingly familiar". Fittingly, Schjeldahl is also a poet. ~ EMILY BOBROW

T.J. CLARK

(book writer)

He was once a member of King Mob--the anarchist group that attacked art galleries in the 1960s--but nobody looks at a painting like the historian T.J. Clark. He spent a whole year studying two Poussin landscapes, and wrote it up in a book, "The Sight of Death" (Yale, 2006). Never mind art reviews, that book shows how to do it yourself. ~ MATTHEW SWEET

CLASSICAL MUSIC

ALEX ROSS

(The New Yorker, periodically; http://www.therestisnoise.com/, daily)

Alex Ross writes about classical music with passion, certainty and unpretentious belief, whether in the New Yorker or on his blog, which has the same name as his new book (Fourth Estate). He never resorts to--in fact, he actively combats--what he calls the "empty formulas of intellectual superiority" that litter most classical-music writing. For Ross (and, I suspect, for most contemporary composers too), classical music does not exist on a mountaintop above every other form of music, but comes from the same culture as rock, punk and hip-hop.  ~ JON FASMAN

NORMAN LEBRECHT

(Evening Standard, every Wednesday)

Lebrecht has his detractors, but his lucid, forceful and funny appraisals of artists, recordings and concerts are always a pleasure to read. ~ SARAH DALLAS