Andrew Clements, Guardian classical music critic, dies aged 75

Andrew Clements has died aged 75 after a period of ill health. For more than three decades he was the Guardian’s chief classical music critic, noted for an authoritative, precise and often dry‑humoured style. Clements was best known for championing new music but had wide musical interests.

He combined a mastery of musical description with other passions, notably natural history and Latin American literature; reviewing the world premiere of Peter Eötvös’s opera Love and Other Demons at Glyndebourne in 2008 he welcomed the work but ended by saying that only the production disappointed “for its failure to evoke any real sense of place, despite the lavish use of video projections full of writhing bodies, insects and reptiles; someone might have pointed out to [the director] that there are no chameleons in South America”.

His career included 11 years as music critic of the New Statesman from 1977, contributions to Time Out, a brief spell as editor of the Musical Times (1987–88), and writing for the Financial Times from 1979 to 1993, where he also reviewed rock and pop. He first wrote for Opera magazine in 1983 and joined its editorial board in 1990; he became the Guardian’s chief classical critic in August 1993, an appointment that the paper says was helped by a recommendation from the pianist Alfred Brendel.

Key Topics

Culture, Andrew Clements, Classical Music, Glyndebourne, Peter Eötvös, Alfred Brendel