Publicity Comes in All Shapes and Colors

From the Washington Post comes news that pianist Dejan Lazic  has asked that the paper remove a concert review written by critic Anne Midgette back in 2010. His request is based on the European Union's Right to Be Forgotten ruling.

Oy vey. There are some misunderstanding here.

First of all, the Right to Be Forgotten ruling applies to search engines. A person can ask Google (at least) to remove links to particular items on the web from the search results served in Europe. The ruling does not in any way require the source of the item to remove that item from the web.  In other words, if I run a search on Dejan Lazic's name from my home in California, I am likely to see the link in my search results; the Washington Post is not obliged to remove the item from its web site. And also, Mr. Lazic has misdirected his request. It should go to Google, not the WaPo. If Google removed a link to an item at a German newspaper under the ruling, that link wouldn't be served in Europe, but it would be served  in the US, and the newspaper could retain the item itself on its web site.

(Disclaimer: I Am Not A Lawyer, and furthermore, while I work for Google, nothing I say is other than my own opinion. I do not represent Google or its views, and what I know about the EU ruling comes from reading the NY Times and other public news sources.)

Second, Anne's review is what I would call mixed, and some of what she says is very positive indeed, the kind of thing that makes me want to hear what Mr. Lazic can do:

The very first notes of Chopin's Andante Spianato and Grande Polonaise Brillante at the start of the program signaled that he can do anything he wants at the keyboard, detailing chords with a jeweler's precision, then laying little curls of notes atop a cushion of sound like diamonds nestled on velvet. Again and again, throughout the afternoon, he showed what a range of colors he could get out of the instrument, switching from hard-edged percussiveness to creamy legato, crackling chords to a single thread of sound. The sheer technical ability was, at first, a delight.

Substitute an ellipsis for "at first" and you have a publicist's dream. It is obvious that this young man can really play the piano, with flair and technique to burn.

Third, and this gets us to a matter I've expounded before, it's usually not a good idea for a performer to read his or her reviews. That's what your manager, publicist, partner, and teacher (if you have one) are for. As I've noted, performers almost always know what has gone wrong in a performance, and know their own strengths or weaknesses. (If not, maybe performing is not the right career for you.) Performers have to be willing to get up there and show the courage of their convictions without worrying what Anne (or me!) will say the next day. They can't and shouldn't be shifting their approach in response to what any particular reviewer thinks on a given day. In other words, reviews can become a distraction, but they need not be.

Fourth, Mr. Lazic needs to have a talk with his publicist. He has been appearing in public for long enough that he must have one; if not, he needs to hire one right away. Talking to the press can be helpful to your career, but sometimes it's just not. Complaining to the Times about how the Met was treating her couldn't have been good for Ruth Ann Swenson's career, for example. Asking the Washington Post to remove a review from your web site just gets you the kind of publicity you might not want. That is, I'd never heard of Dejan Lazic until a day or two ago. Now I have, but think if all I knew was that very positive paragraph Anne wrote in 2010!

Putting it bluntly, if you're a professional musician, part of your publicist's job is to help you deal effectively with the press, by coaching you about what to do and what not to do.

Lastly, Mr. Lazic has misunderstood the nature of reviews, and I wish Caitlin Dewey had explained this in her blog posting: a review is an opinion piece. Yes, parts of it are factual, including:

• Who played, and where
• What was on the program
• Whether a string player or singer is in tune (individual listeners have varying degrees of sensitivity to this, but pitch is a fact, not an opinion)

But the most interesting part of a review, and the real reason to read a review, is the writer's opinion of a performance. Was it effective? Was it exciting or dull? Did it work? Was it an eccentric performance (think Ugorski's Beethoven piano sonata op. 111, as recorded) or a "central," uneccentric performance? Do you want to hear these performers again? Does the repertory suit the singer's style? 

These are things that are debatable, which is why, in a perfect world, we'd have multiple reviews of any particular performance. Reviewers' tastes and interests and training vary; they have different areas of strength and weakness. 

In the end, it doesn't make much sense to ask for a review to be taken down. If you're a touring pro, you probably play from 50 to 150 performances annually, depending on your fame, age, repertory, endurance, etc. A single performance is just one day out of your career; a particular review is unlikely to make or break you. It's just one person's opinion, after all.

UPDATE: I've clarified how the EU ruling works. And I'm reminded that I meant to mention the Streisand effect, in which nobody is paying attention to something you want ignored....until you call their attention to it through legal action. Then everybody pays attention.