TO THE CRITICS OF VANESSA-MAE

Vanessa-Mae has many admires and her best fans really love her for her music and for who she is as a person. With this website, we try to express and describe our fascination for this multi-talented and beautiful young woman. However besides much acclaim and praise, Vanessa-Mae, being a high profile artist and celebrity, attracts much criticism and disapproval too. Basically there is nothing wrong with that, because everyone makes mistakes and no one is perfect, or beyond criticism.

We do not feel the need nor urgency to repeat what the critics hold against Vanessa-Mae. We recommend to search the internet via a search engines like Google and you will be able to find enough information to get an impression about different views that go around on Vanessa-Mae, varying from disdain, critical and mild disapproval to devotion and love. We only want to briefly categorise the kind of criticism Vanessa-Mae receives from various groups.

The critics of Vanessa-Mae can be divided into several groups. First are the classical purists who really detest Vanessa-Mae's modern and personal approach of playing classical music because they are devoted to the idea that classical music should be played only according to the original scores of the composer. Moreover, this group of purists believe in the idea that classical music is an elitist form of art that should not be influenced by modern and renewing influences but stay as it is. They don't like the modern pop-like methods to promote artists and their albums, that are aimed to gain better commercial profits and to tackle the decline in the average sales figures for the classical albums. A second group of people bring Vanessa-Mae's technical skills on the violin to the discussion. They really doubt her talent. Often, these arguments are used by the classical purists as well. These people feel that if Vanessa-Mae was really talented, she would stick to playing classical music, since, in their point of view, that is the highest form of musical art: which is a really elitist point of view in our perception! A third group of people could be called moral censors. They use moral arguments of decency to reject Vanessa-Mae's image and presentation. Needles to say that many critics use arguments from all three groups.

We do not want to spend any space of this website to counter all the criticism. People who do not like Vanessa-Mae as a person, her musical philosophy and violin play can not be convinced; why spend time on trying to do so: we invite everyone to listen and judge for yourselves!

We think that Vanessa-Mae's career achievements speak for itself. Many people experience joy in listening to her music and audiences at the concerts reward her with standing ovations many times each show. As for her image and personality, Vanessa-Mae has never been the subject of real scandals and her behaviour in public is impeccable and without blemish. Tutors, colleagues and many other specialists in music have praised Vanessa-Mae's talents and technical skills. She has sold millions of albums and her concerts are in general sold out.

We hope that people who are not familiar with the music of Vanessa-Mae will take the time to listen to her albums. Vanessa-Mae is an unique musician with an original and renewing approach to music. She dares to examine new pathways and explore new things. If this appeals to you then we hope this website will give you some insight on where to begin in discovering the musical world of Vanessa-Mae.

On a side note, playing music is not a contest about who is the best! If you would ask about who is the best violinist, the best pianist, the best conductor, or what is the best orchestra, and so on, you would probable receive many different names as answers.And that would leave the question about who is right as virtually beyond any possible determination. But music is not a contest: music is about emotions, and musicians seek to move and touch people with their art.

No doubt, Vanessa-Mae moves many people with her approach to music and with her personality!

As Vanessa-Mae said once: 'purists say that they know what they like, but in fact they only like what they know.'

copyrights of the text © VMSPOS @ http://www.vanessa-mae.nu, The Netherlands, 2009.