After Anthony Tommasini faulted the conductor Philippe Jordan in a review for leading a program of repertory staples — including Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony — with the New York Philharmonic in late October, a reader wrote Mr. Tommasini an email with his vehement disagreement. It led to a lively exchange between the two about what classical music audiences really want. The following correspondence has been edited and condensed.

A READER WRITES:

You take a swipe at Mr. Jordan for “playing it safe.” I am a subscriber to the Philharmonic and I have listened, usually painfully, to cutting edge or obscure compositions that you wish he had added to the program. As you are a critic, you view and listen to performances through a very different lens than those who want to be soothed and enthralled after a long day of tedium. The last thing I want is Philip Glass, obscure Swiss music, or anything that doesn’t sparkle like crystal. I avoid the type of music that you try promote and while this is indeed a “safe” program, I have been looking forward to the evening for weeks. — RANDEL COLE

A CRITIC RESPONDS:

I appreciate hearing from readers, especially those who love music as much as you clearly do. But I do think it’s a problem for classical music when major conductors like Mr. Jordan play it “safe.”

It’s certainly true that as a critic, I may have approached this program with a “different lens,” as you put it. But when you state that you want to be “soothed and enthralled” after a long day of tedium, I have to say that Beethoven would be perturbed by the idea that anyone would find his Seventh Symphony soothing, or even enthralling. He had something greater and more disruptive in mind. Beethoven was writing the “cutting edge,” to use your term, works of his day — pushing boundaries, trying to shake up listeners and devise entirely new ways to conceive a symphony. You might be amazed to see the number of uncomprehending reviews his symphonies received when they were new. One London critic, 12 years after the premiere of the Seventh Symphony, could still not “discover any design in it” and concluded that the piece might be some kind of “hoax.”