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On December 8, the New York Times published a small article on the web about 'standout CDs in the Mozart Year' ie classical releases. Some critic recommended Mitsuko Uchida's recordings of the Debussy etudes on Decca. Nothing wrong with the recommendation, except that it was released by Philips, and recorded in 1990. I emailed them about this error within hours of their article coming on to the web. 12 hours ago, when I checked, the error was still uncorrected, but now it has. Slow! They didn't email me to acknowledge receipt, although when I find errors on the BBC site, they BBC always emails me back. The same reviewer recommended a performance of the Bartok sonata for two piano and percussion with Georg Solti as a pianist. I did not email them about this CD, to see if their arts editor was actually awake. If you read the article, there is nothing to state that this is likewise not a new release for Mozart year. Perhaps the NYT believes everyone knows Solti is dead.
Follow Ups:
"The same reviewer recommended a performance of the Bartok sonata for two piano and percussion with Georg Solti as a pianist."What is wrong with this? It won a Grammy Awards in 1989
It is like saying, 'Tolstoy's Anna Karenina is my standout novel of the year 2006, because I finally got round to reading this 1996 translation earlier this year.'
Normally in a non-specialised magazine, one would state what is a reissue and what is new. For instance, this reviewer also recommended Landowska recordings. No one reading the article would realize that she has been dead for decades, and hence the sound of the recording is not modern.
One of the favorite habits of La Stampa, our local daily, is to recommend recordings that are (and have been) out of print for long. Additionally, they mostly indicate a wrong price, typically budget for full price and super budget for budget, so that if some outlet chance to have a copy left, they are faced with angry people showing up with a copy of the newspaper and insisting for a lower price.
The NYT is hemorrhaging readership (and thus money) at a stupendous rate--if reports are to be believed, about 10% a year. All staff have been cut back and many old hands replaced with younger, less experienced (hence cheaper) folks. And new staff have a higher workload because there are fewer of them.Same thing here with the (NYT-owned) Boston Globe. They fired nearly every reviewer, for example, and replaced them with people at lower salary.
I expect that errors such as the one you point out will become more common and that responses to corrections (given the small constituency of the item in question) will be either slow or nonexistent.
Still read the NYT online, tho.
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