WHO would dare to criticise the critic? Nobody cared to do so last Tuesday night when The Irish Times's former music critic Charles Acton received universally favourable notices from assembled guests at the Royal Irish Academy of Music. The occasion was a party to mark the publication of Acton's Music, a collection of the retired critic's reviews over a 30 year period, edited by Limerick based Gareth Cox.
It was clear that for Dr Cox this task was a labour of love, even though he remembered that the only time one of his performances had been reviewed by Charles Acton "it was completely unfavourable. I left the country and only returned 12 years later.
Similarly, pianist John O'Conor was full of praise for the former critic but also summarised a review marking his first professional engagement with RTE as being "I shouldn't have played what I did RTE shouldn't have booked me and my music teacher shouldn't have let me play anyway."
Indeed, despite the celebratory nature of the night, there seemed to be a collective wish to recall only the most unfavourable of Mr Acton's notices. He himself pointed out that although a number of his DGOS reviews were included in Dr Cox's selection "he has only put in the nice, ones not the ones that led to them writing to the editor and refusing me admission to the theatre again." Obviously when he was younger, Mr Acton was the recipient as well as the giver of criticism.