The kindest and most considerate of critics, the conductor Sir Antonio Pappano said of him – and few who read Edward Greenfield, who has died aged 86, in his almost 30 years as a Guardian music critic, or who followed his reviews in Gramophone magazine, or who listened week by week to The Greenfield Collection, his long-running series on the BBC World Service, would have disagreed.
Yet this accolade was in a sense controversial. There were those who read him, who sat alongside him as critics, or among those who oversaw his copy at the Guardian, who found him too kind, too considerate; who wanted more of a cutting edge. They were not going to get that from Greenfield. He was against that approach temperamentally, but also on principle, as he explained in a statement he called his credo, which he wrote on his retirement as chief music critic in July 1993. Critics, he wrote, are “expected to be sour. I would much prefer it if, instead of ‘critic’, we could find a crisp word meaning ‘one who appreciates’ … My own consistent belief is that the music critic must aim at appreciation above all, trying never to let the obvious need for analysis in nitpicking detail get in the way of enjoyment … My aim always is to go to a concert, or put on a CD, wanting to like.”
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