I now want a critic, to tell me if Pinchas Zuckerman's performance of the Elgar Violin Concerto at the Proms on Sunday night really was as mediocre as I suspect it of having been.

Basically, I just thought there were too many duff notes and badly phrased phrases. Zuckerman's playing sounded to me choppy and ugly, in a way I certainly don't recall from having for many years owned Zuckerman's recording of this wonderful piece with Barenboim and the LPO. So, I switched off and did something else. I didn't switch off the TV set, on which he was playing. I just switched off my mind and ears.

Because of that, I have zero confidence in the satisfactoriness of my response, which could just have been wrong. If you want a critic to tell you about this performance, I am not it. Although this performance didn't grab me, that could be because I just wasn't in the mood to be grabbed, and if God had been the soloist I might still have allowed my mind to wander. I don't think that's what happened, but I really can't be sure. Maybe, for example, it was the fussy looking gestures of conductor Sir Andrew Davis (whom I have never much enjoyed looking at when he conducts) that also put me off.

The announcers and non-critical responders rounded up by the BBC to react to Zuckerman's performance had nothing bad to say about his playing, but they never do. They are there to accentuate the positive and make you keep on listening, and there is usually something positive to say about any half adequate performance. And then they talked with Zuckerman himself, and that was all about how wonderful it was to be playing Elgar in England with an English orchestra, and about how Zuckerman has to teach American orchestras how to play this music. He has, after all, recording this piece twice, and played it in concert halls all over the world, many times.

So now I find myself genuinely curious to learn if my casual impression matches with anyone else's properly considered opinion. Was it just me, or was this a decidedly imperfect performance? And I ask, because I truly want to know, the way most people who say "Was it just me or …?" are not truly asking.

Sadly, I can find no reference via google to anyone else's response to this performance, so here's what I will do. I will listen to that first Zuckerman recording, and to maybe a couple of other recordings, of this lovely piece. Then, I will listen (which may perhaps be more focussing than listening and watching) to the repeat of this concert that Radio 3 is broadcasting on Thursday afternoon. Much of the point of this posting is to remind me to do just this, despite the fact that there is a Test Match starting that day. And this time I will try to listen properly.

If no other critic will oblige me with a considered opinion of this performance, I will have to do the job myself. Assuming I manage to do this, I will report back.

But that's not my central point here. My central point is that concert reviewers do definitely have their uses. They educate the tastes of their readers, by either reinforcing their confidence in their judgements, or by undermining that confidence. Both processes are valuable.