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Posted by Marc Bridle on November 13, 2005, 12:27 pm, in reply to "Re: Greatest Conductor" I'm not sure what criteria has been used to compile these leagues but the most startling misplacement is Bernstein. I can see why Alex places him so low (based in part on his measure of how commercial conductors become) but Bernstein is a conductor of considerable stature (would he, I wonder, in a list of violinists, place Menuhin so low when he too broadened his musical horizons to take in the popular?) His Mahler is still amongst the most important to have been recorded, and his DVD cycle on DG gives a quite different measure of Bernstein's greatness as a Mahler conductor of the first rank to what many of us will know from his audio recordings. Moreover, I know at last three people who heard Bernstein do Mahler 9 live with the Concertgebouw in London and for all three of them the concert ranks not as just the greatest Mahler concert they have the heard, but as the greatest concert of anything they have heard. The simple truth about these lists is that on any given day a conductor in the third division can raise himself to the premiere. Muti is a very good example. It is also true to say that any conductor in the premiere division can fall to the third: Boulez can sometimes seem an incredibly lazy conductor in concert. But I am surprised one name appears so low on Alex's list, and that is Tilson Thomas. In at least two concerts I know Alex to have been to he has rated the Tilson Thomas performances as amongst the finest he has ever heard (albeit one after this list was compiled). In which case: is this a listing based on recordings alone, or does it take in much wider criteria?
86.132.104.127
I do find some of these choices inexplicable: Furtwangler is not listed as in a class of his own, but with the likes of Tintner and Boulez (both vastly overrated here). Strauss finds himself listed with Stravinsky, Hindemith, Pfitzner (ludicrous placing) and Penderecki when he had a much broader repertoire than any of them and left behind more estimable recordings (moreover, Strauss is as important as Mahler as a conductor/composer - where would Reiner and Szell be without Strauss?) Alex places five living conductors in his premiere division, but they are the wrong five in my view (Kreizberg is an especially perplexing choice). Eschenbach is important because he is imaginative and devoted to modern music, and a very fine Bruckner interpreter; but so is Barenboim who finds himself in the third division.
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