Alban's Blog

How do you deal with criticism/reviews?

Since I don‘t have a teacher for the last 13 years anymore and most of the people won‘t tell you the complete truth after a performance I am happy to be able to learn from reviews, bad as well as good ones.

Certainly we mustn‘t take everything which is written or said about us at face value, but on the other side if I find a common tenor in several reviews I take it very serious and actually this attitude made me a better player over the years. As for many musician it is not always easy for me to accept criticism, it can hurt at times, especially because we need enough self-confidence in order to survive on stage, which can be undermined by a slating. I try to read reviews no matter if negative or positive a couple of days after a concert and then reflect about it. No, I don‘t want to please everybody, rather the contrary: I try to find my own voice and play things the way I and not the possible reviewer, think they should be played – but at the same time we never know how our music arrives in the hall, and for that the music critic is a good mouthpiece.

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