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Posted by Alex Russell Dear Alex: Although I really don't care too much where you put Rattle, I do have some questions. 1) This is a personal list. Is it based on the experience of actually listening to each of these conductors on records? 2) If so, how did you manage to rate Mahler? Are there any recordings of his conducting? 3) Where do you rank Svetlanov? 1) Yes: as most of the conductors on my personal list are dead now I had no choice but to listen to them on record or CD although I saw a few of them in the flesh. I obviously did not hear Mahler conduct and Mahler did not leave us any recordings of his conducting. Otto Klemperer saw Mahler conduct the Beethoven 7 and said no one conducted it better. 3) I saw Svetlanov with the LSO at the Royal Festival Hall in the late 70’s and rated him highly then but he went off later in his career due to alcoholism. Svetlanov's Mahler (and Bruckner) were rather crude and bland and he had no real rapport with these composers. Best regards Alex Russell
on December 31, 2005, 9:39 pm, in reply to "Re: Greatest Conductor"
84.67.194.137
RE Alex Russell's interesting list of 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th tier conductors.
Thanks Jon
Dear John: To answer your questions:
2) I rate Mahler as a great conductor by what his contemporaries said of his conducting and also Toscanini greatly admired Mahler’s conducting as did Otto Klemperer who said to Peter Heyworth that Mahler was a greater conductor than Toscanini and to my mind Toscanini (and Klemperer) are the greatest conductors. So I think if both Klemperer and Toscanini rate Mahler as a great conductor – and they are great conductors in their own right - then it stands to reason that Mahler may have been the greatest conductor of all time; he was a far greater conductor than a composer – and only really composed as a hobby in his holiday breaks from conducting.
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