The Press: Critic at Large

Brooks Atkinson covered Broadway for 35 years before the New York Times gave him the honorific title critic at large. But George Gelles, music critic of the Boston Herald Traveler for just two months, reached the same status last week. And he is only 27. What accounts for the sudden rise?

Years of music study, for one thing —at the Manhattan School of Music, Princeton, Brandeis and a year of graduate work at the Free University in Berlin. At Manhattan, Gelles studied under Michael Steinberg, a distinguished musicologist who now writes reviews for the Boston Globe. Like Steinberg, Critic Gelles insists upon high musical standards. Four weeks ago in the Globe, Steinberg chided Carlo Maria Giulini, guest conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. If Danny Kaye or Victor Borge had conducted “with such crazed dislocation of tempo and with such prodigality in expression of tragic suffering and deep knee-bends,” wrote Steinberg, “the audience would have been in stitches.” Two weeks ago in the Herald Traveler, Gelles remarked that Guest Conductor Seiji Ozawa “has shrunk from a lightweight with charm and real elegance to a conductor whose performances are technically inaccurate and emotionally indifferent.”

Friends of the symphony bridled. Several orchestra members signed an anti-Steinberg telegram to the Globe. The protest went unheeded. Similarly, a Symphony Orchestra board of trustees member wrote to Herald Traveler Publisher Harold E. Clancy expressing dismay that the paper had hired “one of [Steinberg’s] young imitators. We think that perhaps the Herald might be in a position to alter its course.”

Clancy denies that he was reacting to any pressure, but Gelles was suddenly promoted to critic at large. So far, his duties are not exactly defined; Gelles’ editors have not given him any assignments. One thing is perfectly clear, though: “at large” does not include the Boston Symphony Orchestra.