Donkey Gongs

An occasional series of awards to music snobs, those self-important asses who bray publicly at composers, musicians and music they (and their club) deem unworthy of critical or listener attention. If you spot any donkeys, please email gro.cosum@ofni.

Gongs awarded:

Andrew Clements (critic/reviewer for The Guardian)

For: "it [the music of Joachim Raff's 11 symphonies] has a kind of bland anonymity, which provides very little to take away except the sense of tremendous if unfocused musical facility." [CD Review, July 2010]

Edward Seckerson (chief music and opera critic for The Independent)

For: "Myaskovsky's 6th Symphony [...] - it's a big and discursive piece to fully grasp at one hearing and its significant flaws make the likelihood of a second [hearing] pretty remote." [Blog entry, April 2010]

Richard Morrison (chief music critic of The Times) ** 2nd Award **

For: "When Steve Reich and Terry Riley brought the hypnotic cross-rhythms of African music and the exuberance of Californian pop into the concert hall, they invented a genre - minimalism - that rescued classical music from the cul-de-sac of deadly atonality." [The Times, April 2010]

Jeremy Nicholas (critic for Gramophone)

For: "Some of us might find Bach too academic or Beethoven too strident, Liszt vulgar, Tchaikovsky neurotic, Wagner long-winded or Prokofiev acerbic." [Gramophone, April 2010]

Philip Clark (critic for Gramophone)

For: "The Ruders, sad to say, I find tepid. [...] Ruders is probably mentioned too much in this magazine." [Gramophone, March 2010]

("...one of Denmark's finest living composers, Poul Ruders" - James Jolly, Gramophone (editor-in-chief), April 2010 edition)


Rick Jones (critic for Classic FM magazine)

For: "...four concertos, each equally bland, by obscure 18th-century Italians Dall'Oglio, Stratico, Nardini & Lolli. They are Vivaldi without the inventive genius." [Classic FM, February 2010 edition]


David Threasher (critic for Gramophone)

For: "Will we find there's more to [Samuel] Barber than a mawkish Adagio and a couple of concertos?" [Gramophone, January 2010, re composer anniversaries]


Norman Lebrecht (critic & broadcaster):

For: "Few scores are more odious than the 'Triumphslied' [sic] of Brahms." [Bloomberg News, September 2009]


Richard Morrison (chief music critic of The Times)

For: "To think that he [Antonio Salieri] wasted all that jealousy on a composer [Mozart] who [at the age of 7 or 8] could write music almost as awful as his." [BBC Music Magazine, October 2009]