Editor's note: The first review of the Honolulu Symphony season is online at www.HonoluluAdvertiser.com, and will appear in print in tomorrow's Island Life section. Ruth Bingham reviews classical music for The Advertiser.

Who needs a critic?

Critics are not lovable.

Critics are blunt. They expose our faults. They remind us that we are not divine, but human and oh-so-fallible. They tell us what we could do better. They reveal the yawning gulf between the ideal we struggled to attain and the reality of what we produced.

Life's short. Who needs them, anyway?

After all, artworks do not need to be graded; audiences can generally figure out whether something is good or bad, delightful or a bore. Nor does art need to be translated; if it does, it has failed miserably. And audiences do not need critics to provide opinions; audiences have plenty of their own.

And yet, criticism has thrived for almost as long as commercial print media, which suggests that there is more to it than "just opinion."

The most basic level of the job is the most well-known: to let potential audiences know whether an event is worth attending while providing honest feedback to performers.

More importantly, critics explain the "why" of performance: why it worked, or was significant, or not.

Critics do, of course, give their opinions, but ideally, they have the background and training to explain them.

A critic should know the history, literature, genres and tradition to explain how a work fits into its context. She should be able to recognize trends, how the field is changing, and why a performance might be important.

Critics also introduce and explain enough of the field's jargon to make it possible for audiences to talk about performances.

Few of us have the time to become experts in all of the arts we enjoy. Writing criticism is a way to share expertise; reading it is a way to partake of others' expertise. In fact, the most avid readers of criticism are other critics.

Criticism is many things, but the one thing it is not is being "right."

It matters less whether readers agree with the critic than whether they can articulate their own opinions and reasoning in response.

By far, the most important aspect of a critic's job is to move discussions beyond where they so often end when people walk out of a performance:

"How was it?"

"Great!" Or, "I didn't like it."

End of discussion.

And when that kind of exchange is the end of discussion, it is also often the end of thought.

Largely because they offer honest feedback in black and white, critics open discussions and foster deeper thought on both sides of the proscenium, which is crucial in a thriving arts community. Often, the more vibrant the criticism, the more vibrant the community.

There are, of course, critics who delight in mishaps, pouncing upon underprepared performers and ravaging poor performances, but they are not the majority.

Anyone who has ever tried to perform respects the courage it takes to present your best for public scrutiny, hoping against hope that it has moved someone, enlightened a mind, sparked new ways of experiencing the world.

Surely most critics are rooting for those on stage, so that critiquing is not a tearing-down, but an act of honesty and appreciation.

Well-written criticism should be a joy to read, even for those who are unable to attend the performance. Although usually written hastily on deadline, criticism should spark ideas, open possibilities, generate contemplation. It is an ideal few critics achieve.

In fact, critics are famously fallible.

They prove themselves wrong regularly: Opera was a "curious experiment" that so far has lasted more than 400 years. Serialism was supposed to be the "music of the future" but withered away after only a few decades. And remember when "Star Wars" was declared a flop?

Half the fun of reading reviews is turning criticism on itself: readers critiquing critics critiquing a performance.

The process as a whole develops everyone's aesthetic senses, sharpens thinking and teaches critical skills, which we all hope will deepen everyone's experience of the next performance.

Who needs a critic? We all do. As they say, everyone's a critic.

Some of us just put it in writing.