A Critic for Us All
Virgil Thomson considered Sibelius "vulgar, self-indulgent and provincial" and thought Jascha Heifetz an intellectual lightweight, a purveyor of "silk underwear music."
Allan Kozinn
Virgil Thomson regarded his career as a music critic as a sideline to his real calling, composition. But as the principal classical music reviewer and essayist for the New York Herald Tribune for 14 years, starting in 1940, he devoted himself to the business of hearing, analyzing and explaining New York's musical life with the kind of passion, zest and specificity—and also, at times, acidity—that puts a reader into the seat alongside him.
A critic in the early 21st century can only envy Thomson, whose regular rounds—captured...